A friend recently gave me the writings of St. Porphyrios (a recent 20th century Greek saint), and I’m working my way through them at glacial speed. This is rather unusual for me, but I can’t read more than two sentences without feeling I’ve suddenly discovered a mystery of the universe and falling into deep contemplation for half an hour.
Yet, when I try to capture my profound reveries, or read aloud the same sentences to someone else, something feels wrong… out of tune. This is a contemplative rabbit trail, but I’ve had several spiritual experiences recently that cannot adequately be put into words. I suppose what matters is how the contemplations shapes my life and actions more so than what words I can find to encapsulate the Spirit’s work within me.
The following are a few notes I made while contemplating death in the context of St. P’s writings.
“Whoever enters into the Church is saved; he becomes eternal. Life is one, an unbroken continuity: there is on end, no death. Whoever follows Christ’s commandments never dies. He dies according to the flesh, according to the passions, and starting from this present life, is accorded to live in Paradise, in our Church, and thereafter in eternity. With Christ, death becomes the bridge which we will cross in an instant in order to continue to live in the unsetting light.
Wounded by Love – The Life and the Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios, pg 90
From the moment I became a monk I believed that death does not exist. That’s how I felt and how I always feel – that I am eternal and immortal. How magnificent!”
St. Porphyrios’ blissful disregard of death is foreign, almost bizarre to me. The experience of marriage and love within marriage brought with it for me, a profound and specific fear of death. A fear, I’ve always assumed most people share. (True, my own husband rolls his eyes at my fear, but he has never been a good yardstick of “normal people fears”.) I’d like to say I don’t particularly fear my own death – though the anxious churnings of my stomach and mind during a bad patch airplane turbulence suggest otherwise. But I very much fear the death of those particularly close to me.
If I take a stab at categorizing fear of death (both my own and others), I find roughly three categories.
Fear of Pain – fear that the physical moment of death would be violent, brutal, cruel, or agonizing. This is not a fear I dwell on, but certainly, I find it undesirable.
Fear of Missed Experiences – the loss (or missing) of childbirth and childrearing, the loss of growing old together, the loss of shared time, the loss of mutual support. This one I fear greatly. Before I married, I feared dying without experiencing marriage and sexual relations. Within marriage I fear dying without ever knowing the mystery of a womb filled with life and bursting forth. The mystery of raising a small Imago Dei, at turns captivating, bewildering, and infuriating. And, having thoroughly interwoven our lives, I struggle to imagine how I would even function without my partner.
Fear of Grief – both for others and by others – fear of how lost I would feel without my spouse. Fear of the deep pain he (and others) would experience. The ache of waking to an empty bed. The profound loneliness of chronic pain suffered without a partner or support. The delicious meal that cannot be shared.
I suppose I am primarily thinking of “untimely death” in these fears. And that phrase is rather a weighted one. Can any death be “untimely” if God breathes each of our lives from first wail to final gasp? At what point would I accept a death as “timely”? Is it the nature of the death? Must it be “old age” and not “disease” or “accident” or even “attack”? Yet Grandma Yoko fell asleep at an old age and rather peacefully though “cause of death” was cancer
It strikes me as I review St. Porphyrios’ words that in all my fears, I completely omit what he considers a somewhat valid though ultimately unneeded fear. Fear of the devil, fear of hell. Fear of being so enslaved to sin that at the final judgement we reject Love and experience the depth and passion of it as unending flame. Perhaps I ought to fear my own death rather more. I am slow to repent, unwilling to admit the evil I wreck and quick to excuse. Too often I think of sin as something I can glibly justify before a judge. Rarely do I see how it blinds and binds me, turning the taste of Love from honey to bitter medicine.
Yet.
“In the Church which possess the saving sacraments there is no despair. We may be deeply sinful. But we make confession the priest reads the prayer, we are forgiven and we progress towards immortality, without any anxiety and without any fear.”
Wounded by Love, Pg 90
If my loved ones dwell in the presence of Christ, surely they will continue to experience goodness, joy, love, and peace, whether I live or no. And as we draw nigh to Christ do we not continue to share life in His presence, alive and asleep? Perhaps it is unhealthy for me to desire a loved one so much that their death matters more than Christ’s eternal presence? Would my husband’s death really mean the loss of all goodness and joy in my life? Can I not trust God to continue to bless and care for me?
Of course, I would grieve the brokenness of death – and yet… St. Porphyrios seems to suggest that death is already healed? Certainly conquered. Would St. P mourn the passing of a friend if he considers himself and the friend already immortal? It seems unlikely. After all, do we not worship with all the Saints in the bosom of Our Father every Liturgy?
As for loss of experience, perhaps ultimately what we seek and treasure in experiences is either intimacy or tasting the beauty of God in creation. What is eternity in a new heaven and earth if not the continual experience of intimacy and beauty?
What of sexual relations? Or childbearing? Are these merely means of experiencing Truth – intimate union with the Trinity – love overflowing into creation, service and sacrifice.
Yet still we long for specific experiences of God’s love – a forest walk, a mountain climb, an ocean bath, a child’s innocent delight in your gaze.
Here I stumble onto a mystery I cannot yet comprehend. And perhaps all this philosophizing obscures the heart of St. Porphyrios’ total lack of fear.
“If we reach the point of feeling joy, love, worship of God without any fear, we reach the point of saying, ‘it is no longer I who live; Christ lives in me.’ (Galations 2:20)”
Wounded by Love, pg 90
Where are desires or fears in this? If we can so trust in the depth and breadth of God’s Love, then all will be will, and we shall live in the fullness of life, that is to say, Christ.