Category Archives: death

Do not accomplice me.

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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.

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“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.

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“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

What Athanasius knew.

death, quotes, saints, world events, , , , , , , ,

Psalm 58:8

Thou tellest my wanderings:
put thou my tears into thy bottle:
are they not in thy book?

The more one researches current events, historical accounts, and the tangled web of cultures and civilizations going back to the foundation of the world, the more likely is a fall into worry and even despair. We fear especially for children who have to grow up in a violent era, as many have done. That’s why I take courage from the life of St. Athanasius, and pray that my children, grandchildren, godchildren, and all of us, might learn deep in our souls what he knew. The following is an excerpt from a post I wrote several years ago in a time of sorrow. I have shared the quote from his treatise more recently than that, but I hope you might agree with me that it’s worth rereading:

I learned in the short account of the life of Athanasius at the beginning of his On the Incarnation, that the last and worst persecution of Christians ended in Egypt in 311 A.D., when Athanasius was about fourteen. From the age of five he had lived with the constant threat of death, and with the ever-present reality of persecution of his friends and family. The behavior of the ungodly is irrational and inhuman, and tends to cause great pain and suffering, often unto death, not only of the innocent but also of the most Christ-like. As an adult the scenes and events of his childhood seem to be fresh in his mind when he writes:

“A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by the present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the Saviour, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Saviour has raised his body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead.”

Thessaloniki – Rubble at Church of the Acheiropoietos