Category Archives: death

The saint’s last words.

death, quotes, saints,

We Orthodox commemorate St. John Chrysostom on three separate dates, none of which is the day that he died, September 14, 407, in modern day Turkey. While in exile he was being moved to modern day Georgia when his health finally gave out. That date in September is the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross, so to avoid conflict his feast day was changed. One of the dates on which he is remembered is today, the date in 438 on which his relics were transferred from the site of his death in Comana to the city of Constantinople.

In the 19th century Archbishop Dmitry preached a homily on this occasion, from which I clipped this portion:

“The virtuous life thanks to which St. John won respect even in exile again aroused his adversaries’ hatred. They petitioned the empress for a decree by which the exiled Chrysostom was sent to a new exile—to the Pitiunt Fortress near Colchis, on the coast of the Black Sea.

“The officials received a special order to treat their prisoner more strictly and to bring him to his destination in a certain number of days despite the difficult roads. The famous pastor of Constantinople had to walk for three months, now in the unbearable heat of the sun, now in pouring rain, without rest or change of clothes.

“Such a journey completely exhausted St. John Chrysostom’s already weak health. Feeling approaching death on the way, he begged his escorts to stop, changed his wet and soiled clothes to white, communed the Holy Mysteries and departed from this world, which was unworthy of him, with the words: “Glory to God for all things!” With the words he loved and often repeated in his life and spoke about during his sufferings: “These words are a deadly blow for satan, but for the one who utters them in every trouble and misfortune they serve as an abundant source of hope and consolation. Once you pronounce them, every cloud of sorrow dissipates.”

-Archbishop Dimitry (Muretov), from a book of his sermons published in 1889

Translation of the relics of St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom is also celebrated on November 13 and January 30.
You can read more of his story here: oca

Do not accomplice me.

death, humanity, poetry, , , ,

TO THE MERCY KILLERS

If ever mercy move you murder me,
I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.
Never conspire with death to set me free,
but let me know such life as pain can give.
Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,
a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,
a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Even though I turn such traitor to myself
as beg to die, do not accomplice me.
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf
of glucose, bottled blood, machinery
to swell the lungs and pump the heart — even so,
do not put out my life. Let me still glow.

-Dudley Randall, After the Killing

To spit on a corpse.

death, quotes, ,

“There is a cruelty that lurks in the human heart: to speak ill of the dead. They lie silent, their mouths shut by the grave, unable to repent, unable to defend themselves. And yet our tongue, restless and unbridled, digs into the soil to unearth their sins. Scripture cuts us off: ‘Do not speak ill of one who has died, for we are all to be numbered among the dead’ (Sirach 8:7). To spit on a corpse is to spit on your own grave.”

-Father Charbel Abernethy, “Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead.” 

Stanley Spencer, Port Glascow Cemetery

They are not two worlds.

church, death, quotes, ,

“In the traditional theology of the Eastern Church this world and the ‘next’ are not two worlds. We use the language of place (heaven and earth) for lack of language not for accuracy. There is more to the created order than we see (‘all things visible and invisible’). But that which is not seen is not inherently separate from that which is. Sacrament (mystery in the East) is a way of describing the relationship between what is seen and what is unseen. Everything is sacrament, icon and symbol.”

-Fr. Stephen Freeman in “A Secular Death”

Nicholas Roerich, Novgorod Cemetery