“But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus dies and rose again, even so, God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. … And thus, we shall always be with the Lord.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever! Forgive me, the sinner. God forgives, and I forgive.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            I would like to begin with a quotation from St. Nikolai Velimirovich, from his Homilies: [A] Commentary on the Gospel Readings for Great Feasts and Sundays Throughout the Year. It is taken from Volume 1, a sermon for the “Second Sunday after Easter: The Gospel on the Myrrh-Bearing Women.” Please forgive the length, and on account of the length, please give great heed:

“Death has one characteristic in common with love: it, like love, works a profound change in many that experience it and go on living. A mother after a funeral goes to the graves of her children. Who goes there? The children in the mother’s soul, with the mother, go to their graves. In a mother’s soul, the mother lives only in one little corner; all the rest is a palace for the souls of the children taken from her. [As an aside, remember, brethren, St. Nikolai is writing in a day and age when the infant mortality rate was significantly higher than that of our present day.]

[Continuing,] so it is with Christ, though to an immeasurably greater extent. He submitted to the confines of the grave so that men, His children, should know the spaciousness of the limitless palace of Paradise.

A mother goes to the graves of her children, as though to raise them to life in her soul, to redeem them by her tears, to have compassion on them by her thoughts. A mother’s love saves her children from disappearance and annihilation in this world, at least for a time.

The Lord, humiliated and spat upon, succeeded, through bowing to His Cross and Tomb, in truly raising the whole human race by His love, and saving it forever from vanishing away and being annihilated. Christ’s act is incomparably greater than the act of any lonely mother in the world, His love for the human race being immeasurably greater than the love of any mother in the world for her children… .

O poor and lonely man—do not say: who will mourn for me when I die? Who will weep over my dead body? Lo, the Lord Christ has mourned for you and wept over you, both in life and in death, more whole-heartedly than [even] your mother would for you.

It is not fitting to call those dead for whom Christ, in His love, suffered and died. They are alive in the living Lord. We shall all know this clearly when the Lord visits the graveyard of this world for the last time, and the trumpets sound” (italics mine).

Today, brethren, the Church assembles, to celebrate the holy Eucharist and to commemorate her dead. In the mind of the Church, the dead are never really dead so long as they are in Christ, and so long as they remain alive in the memory of the living faithful. Indeed, to forget one’s dead loved ones is to do them a great dishonor. That is the mind of antiquity. And that is the cultural heritage of the Church: our dead loves are remembered… because they are loved. To love is to keep near to one’s heart. To keep near to one’s heart is to keep in mind, to remember. “The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance; he shall not fear evil tidings” (Ps 111:6). We sing this Psalm verse frequently, as one of our Communion hymns. “Blessed are they whom Thou hast chosen and taken, O Lord. Their memory is from generation to generation” (Ps 64:4; 101:12). We will hear these Psalm verses sung today as our Communion hymn. To remember a loved one is to keep a part of them alive. Their memory is an “icon of the mind,” an “icon of the heart.” And no greater mind may keep our dead loved ones than the mind of Almighty God.

“Behold, the Protector of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps 121: 4). “Though a mother forgets even the child she has born, lo, I will not forget you! I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” (Isa 49:15-16a).

            Today, brethren, we heard from St. Paul concerning the resurrection of the dead:

“But I do not want you to be ignorant, … concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus. … For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive… shall be caught up together with them… to meet the Lord. And thus, we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess 4:13-14, 16-17).

“But I do not want you to be ignorant…,” says the Apostle. Ignorant. Brethren, we live ignorant lives. We live as though we cannot die! And when someone dies, we mourn, as though they can never live again! We are perplexing, and contradictory, and ignorant creatures.  This life, brethren, is not the only life! This world is not the only world! We amass to ourselves wealth and goods, and we forget about the Great and Terrible Judgment Day. We “eat and drink and make merry” (cf. Eccl 8:15) as if there were no tomorrow. We take the words of Qoheleth—the Teacher of Ecclesiastes—a bit too seriously. And we do not read them through the lens of the resurrection of the Son of God. One struggles with depression and thinks to himself, “This is my life; this is all there is for me.” Another struggles with addiction and thinks to herself, “I will never be well. And if I become well, I will surely relapse; this is all there is for me.” A baby is diagnosed in utero with a chronic illness, a malformation, a cognitive delay, and we say—with such modern, medical sophistication—“It would be better for them if they never lived at all.” This is the secular perspective! This is the perspective of a world without the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

            “We live as though we cannot die. And when someone dies, we mourn, as though they can never live again.” Brethren, our life on earth is so fleeting, so transitory. Meaningful, yes! Terribly meaningful! But our life on earth—before the realization of Christ in ourselves, and the fullness of life he affords—is but a glimpse, a snapshot, a passing moment in comparison to the life of the eternal Kingdom. Brethren, each of us has experienced loss. Each of us has experienced a “vacuum of life.” We have watched parents die. We have watched grandparents die. We have watched spouses die. We have watched children die. We have experienced the losses of friendships, jobs; mental and emotional stability. Death and decay and pain surround us. It is unavoidable. It is real. It is impactful. Death—in its own sense—is meaningful, terribly and sorrowfully meaningful. It must be acknowledged for what it is. It must be accepted.

            But in the light of the gospel, even something so heavy as death, must be reinterpreted, recontextualized. Death is hard; death impresses a deep ache upon the soul. But death is not the end. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning,” says the Psalmist (Ps 30:5). Truly, the life of Christ and our life in Christ, must reflect this mystery: the mystery of the resurrection from the dead; the mystery of the Kingdom which is to come, and the Kingdom—which our Lord says—is “within you” (Luke 17:21). The reality of life beyond the grave is still to come. The reality of the bodily resurrection of all those who lie in the tombs is still to come. And yet, the Apostle says, “If you are in Christ, then you are a new creation,” (2 Cor 5:17; italics mine), and elsewhere, “Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. … So, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

            It is appropriate, brethren, in the midst of the Great Fast to remember our mortality, to mourn, to repent. But the Fast is not an end in itself; neither is our mourning nor repentance and end in themselves. But they exist to cultivate, not death, but a fuller life in each of us. The Great Fast, though it is a long and somber road, does have an end. That end is the glorious Pascha of our Lord. Our mortal lives are the Lent of our spiritual lives. Now we mourn, now we toil, now we exercise moderation and discretion and sobriety. But in the life to come will be all fullness of joy, and dancing, and feasting, for we do not “sorrow as others who have no hope. … We believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, [and] God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus. … Thus, we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess 4:13-14, 17a).

Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!