It would seem that you don’t even want to think about death, but here you have to prepare. If you compare it with a final exam, then your whole life is a long learning process, striving for it and nowhere else. Those who have studied well all year are not afraid of exams. On the contrary, quitters and truants try to study in the last three days, and even then only in the process of making cheat sheets.
With death this number does not pass. Or rather, it passes, but as an extreme exception. There are examples of deep and saving dying repentance, the most striking of which is hanging on the cross to the right of the Lord Jesus. Hoping for a repetition of such a miracle in your life is impudence. Such miracles are not planned. You need to repent today. Today we need to think about death.
A believer thinks of death not as a disappearance, but as a radical change in the way of being. If it is associated with disappearance, then you will have to agree with the thoughts of some Greeks, who said that while we exist, there is no death, and when death exists, we no longer exist. This is a rather elegant verbal exercise, thrown back in the manner of the sophists. But it does not warm and in its depths contains lies. We are intimately familiar with death throughout our temporary life.
Our forefather heard from God that he would “die by death” if he ate from the forbidden tree. He ate it and died immediately. He died physically, nine hundred and sixty years later, but he felt the taste of death right there. His eyes were opened, and he recognized his nakedness, and with it his shame. He lost grace, was afraid of God, and felt a terrible emptiness inside. He experienced many more painful conditions, which were passed on to his offspring and multiplied there many times over. The entire history of mankind since then has been the cumulative experience of dying, the experience of resisting death, the experience of losing in the fight against it. In this struggle, man was warmed by the expectation that God would eventually intervene in history and defeat death and sin. And even when the hope for this disappeared from most souls, when the First Gospel was forgotten, people still continued to be warmed by the feeling of personal immortality.
Wherever there is a person, there is. And wherever there is a funeral rite, the central thought in it is the thought of continuing life beyond the grave. Sometimes there is a second thought, more important, namely the thought of a future resurrection. She could express herself very simply. For example, by placing the deceased in the baby's position, in that curled-up state in which we spend the prenatal period and in which some people like to sleep. This position of the body, communicated to the deceased, draws a parallel between the mother's womb from which a person was born and the earth, this womb common to all, from which he is to be resurrected.
In addition to this extreme simplicity, belief in the afterlife can be overgrown with a mass of rituals, say, Egyptian ones, with mummification, complexly developed rituals, sacrifices, and so on. We will not find a single people who do not know the funeral ritual and do not believe in the continuation of life beyond the grave. A huge amount of literature is devoted to this issue, but now it is important for us to understand only one idea. Namely: in the universal human experience death is nothing more than a change in the mode of existence, and not its cessation altogether.
It's a lot like birth. A more radical change in the mode of existence than that of man is visible only in the example of the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Defiantly unaesthetic, slowly crawling, of no interest to anyone except hungry birds, the caterpillar absolutely miraculously turns into a fluttering, light creature, painted with all the colors of heaven. But what about man?
The person in the womb is positioned upside down. He doesn't breathe with his lungs. Does not feed by mouth. A person receives everything necessary from the mother’s body through the umbilical cord. In addition, the person is completely immersed in water. He is in no way similar to “that” himself as he will become after some time: directed upward, seeing the sun, moving independently. Only the reluctance to look closely at this “ordinary miracle” makes it familiar in our eyes. But once you think about it, you will immediately agree that there is much more in common between the concepts of “being born” and “dying” than we think.
Ancient Christians considered the day of death to be a day. It was a transition from a worse life to a better one, and in order to think and feel like that, you need to have a very vivid experience of holiness. The main enemy of fearless death is sin. Sin separates man from God and subjugates " having the power of death, that is, devil olu” (Heb. 2:14). If coming to faith is marked by a joyful inner experience of forgiveness of sins and entry into the celebration of Eternal Easter, then mortal fear disappears, replaced by hope in God, love for Him and courage.
Having touched upon birth, one cannot ignore it. It is true birth into eternal life, the only Sacrament mentioned in the Creed. The hasty, inattentive, devoid of due reverence, the performance of this Sacrament, which has become a habit, has greatly impoverished our spiritual life. The era of the great martyrs, the first three and a half centuries of Christian history, were times when Christians spent a long time preparing to receive Baptism and were baptized as adults. They attended the Liturgy, listened to the Scriptures and left with the words “You catechumens, go forth.” Bishops and elders held conversations with them. They learned to pray. Intense and unhurried preparation for the Sacrament gave birth to a deep inner experience after the Sacrament itself. It was precisely the living experience of being born again, the experience of communion with the Risen Christ, the experience of entering into the life of the future century. This partly explains the courageous struggle against sin and the amazing patience in suffering for which the Church of those distant centuries was famous.
But what should we do, those who were baptized in childhood, need tears of repentance and, apart from them, are deprived of any other moisture that cleanses the soul? We need to be reborn through repentance. Tears are mentioned for a reason. The beginning of the baby's earthly life, upon its separation from the mother's body, is marked by a tearful cry. In the same way, the soul screams and cries when it is reborn; in the same way, with screams and tears, tired of vanity, it tears off the clinging veils of sin. We so want to spend our lives laughing, we are so in love with fun, any, for any reason, that the words from Chrysostom’s prayer should ring like thunder for us: “Give me, Lord, tears, mortal memory and tenderness.” Let us also ask God in prayer for tears and the memory of mortals, so that on an unknown and trembling day we may find God merciful for ourselves.
The gate and path leading to eternal life are narrow. You cannot enter them freely, but you can only squeeze through. This is also an image very similar to birth. When a child is born, what else does it do but squeeze through, not intensify with pain and torment in half, to come out and find freedom?
Repentance is dying, dying to sin and coming to life for God. " So consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord“(Rom. 6:11) this is accomplished once in a life through Baptism, and then continues throughout life through the fulfillment of the commandments and the struggle with passions.
I thought a lot about the primary, deep meaning of words. So the word “art” is associated with the concept of “temptation” or “test”. Anyone who has been “tested” many times in any matter is already “sophisticated”; his practical skill can be called the word “art.” Art is a masterful skill, and it requires experience and frequent repetition. We die only once; we are deprived of the experience of frequent dying, which means we are doomed to an “inept” death. Our death must be clumsy, just as the first pancake must come out lumpy. There is true insight in all these reflections. Somehow the following thought suggests itself: you need to learn to die, you need to invent a way to properly prepare for the most important event in your earthly journey.
He wrote in his famous diary that the true Christian life is the experience of dying to sin and preparing for eternity. It is interesting that Plato spoke in approximately the same terms about the goals of true philosophy. “It teaches us to die,” said Plato, meaning that break with worldly ties and dying to vanity, which are characteristic of true philosophy.
What the sages of antiquity foresaw was turned into reality and concrete action by the Christian saints. It was to die that the monks left when they left the cities and settled in forest wilds or dry deserts. Their life, devoid of any understandable and worldly pleasure, appears to be nothing more than death for a worldly person. An ordinary person would rather agree to die that one and real death than to live like a monk and suffer. But this strange life, that is, monasticism, is a voluntary death before the onset of that unknown and inevitable one.
The fathers advised to treat many events of everyday life as if the person had already died. For example, like a dead person, you need to learn to respond to praise and scolding.
And you need to learn to mourn your sins as if there was a dead person in your house.
It would also be nice to treat all sorts of rumors and gossip, all the informational tinsel with the attention of a buried dead.
It's all high. So high that it seems unattainable. I know. Agree. But the very reading of stories and sayings from the lives of the great fathers of the desert in some secret way heals the soul and instills in it heavenly thoughts. Without going to a monastery, without ceasing to live in a high-rise building and visiting a supermarket, we still have the same task as all Christians of antiquity: to fulfill the commandments. Fulfillment of the commandments must kill sin and revive the spirit. " If Christ is in you, the flesh is dead to sin, but the spirit is alive to the Lord", says Saint Paul. And he also says: “ Let sin not reign in your dead flesh“Paul has many similar words, built on the antithesis of death and life, death to sin and life for the Lord.
You can think about death with a smile, as long as its cold breath does not move the hair on your temples. They say John Lennon slept in a coffin when he was young. Of course, not because he imitated, but because he was stupid. During these years, he and the other Beatles said that they would surpass the Lord Jesus Christ in popularity (!?) But in the last years of his life, he was terrified of death, avoided talking about it and slept with the electricity on. This is an instructive and bitter truth. And that old man from the fable, who was tired of carrying firewood, who remembered that his whole life had been spent in hunger and labor, prayed for death to come. But as soon as she came to his call, he was not taken aback and said: “Help me carry the firewood to the house.” We don’t want to joke about death ahead of time. We should not laugh at her while sins and passions are alive in us. But we must think about its inexorable and inevitable appearance and pray for the granting of “a Christian death, painless, shameless, peaceful.” This petition is pronounced at Vespers, Matins, and Liturgy.
Christ wept over the tomb. These were the shuddering tears of a sinless Man at the sight of the misfortune and shame into which death plunged the children of Adam. The experience of Lazarus remained unspoken for us, since the corresponding words are simply not in the human dictionary to describe both Lazarus’ sojourn in hell and Paul’s sojourn in heaven. (See 2 Cor. 12:4) But the very tears of the God-man should be more instructive than any words.
There is no shame in crying over the coffin. Cry and dissolve grief through prayer and almsgiving. One of the desert fathers said that if we hear that death is approaching one of the brothers, we should rush to him. Firstly, to strengthen the departing person through prayer in the minutes or hours of the last struggle. And secondly, to feel with your heart this great mystery - the separation of the soul from the body. The heart will feel more than the eyes will see and the ears will hear. A person will cheer up, feel the fear of God, shake off despondency and lack of faith. Because " the dust will return to the ground as it was; and the spirit will return to God, who gave it"(Eccl. 12:7)
Those times when death was distant and not a daily spectacle were times of unheard-of debauchery. This was before the Flood, when it was " great is the wickedness of men on earth, and every thought of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually."(Genesis 6:5) Our times, times of immensely increased human weakness, every now and then squeeze the heart with melodies and verses of funeral services. It would be worth learning it by heart, for everyone. This is the teaching of the Church, expressed through the means of high poetry. The self-vocal stichera of John of Damascus, troparia on “Blessed are you, O Lord,” and, in general, the entire funeral service is a “funeral weeping” that teaches faith and heals the soul. You can literally live by these prayers. A “classical” Orthodox grandmother, in addition to “Father”, “Virgin Mary” and “I Believe”, who knows the funeral service by heart, is the owner of the most important religious knowledge.
An important detail: in funeral services there are frequent appeals to martyrs. The blood of those who suffered for the Name of Christ is the royal scarlet of the Church. Christ shed blood for the human race. The martyrs shed their blood for Christ. In this mutual shedding of blood, the Lord and the martyrs entered into a mysterious and inseparable unity. Often people who decided to suffer any kind of suffering for Christ saw Him. He appeared to them, strengthening and encouraging. Therefore, the word “martyr” in Greek sounds like “martiros” and means not only a sufferer, but also a witness. The martyr does not just believe. He already sees. The reality of another, future life is slightly revealed to his inner gaze, and the martyr proclaims to us about eternity and spiritual reality more than any theologian. This means that honoring Christ’s sufferers can encourage our frightened and tired soul. Before we get started " to Mount Zion, and to the city of the Living God, to heavenly Jerusalem and ten thousand Angels; to the triumphant council and church of the firstborn, written in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.”(Heb. 12:22-23), we must often call upon in prayer the names of these righteous men who have attained perfection.
But the most important thing, of course, is this. The joy of Easter night is precisely the joy of victory over the “last enemy,” as it is written: “ The last enemy to be destroyed is death."(1 Cor. 15:26) The text of the Easter canon is literally filled with expressions of joy about the victory over death. - “We celebrate the killing of death, the destruction of hell, the beginning of another eternal life, and, playing, we sing to the Guilty One"
- “Your immeasurable compassion, seeing through the bonds of hell, walking towards the light, O Christ, with merry feet, praising the eternal Easter”
- “Yesterday I was crucified with You, Christ, today I rise with You, I rise again with You. I fell upon You yesterday, You glorified me, O Savior, in Your Kingdom.”
The meaning of the last troparion is especially important. He says that in order for our nature to feel the victory of Christ over death, it is necessary that we take part in Christ’s suffering. Patient, long-term and honest self-mortification before the Face of God during Lent will be crowned with renewal and joyful purification at Easter. The blessed experience of experiencing Christ's Easter is what we need most of all as we strive for the life of the next century.
Many lines of the psalms, known by letter, reveal their secret meaning. “Your youth will be renewed like an eaglet”, “My tongue will rejoice in Your righteousness”, “All my bones will say: Lord, Lord, who is like You?”, “Humble bones will rejoice”, etc. Truly, the tongue rejoices, saying “Christ is risen!” And every bone knows that since Christ has risen, there will be a day when the word will sound: “ dry bones! Listen to the word of the Lord! ... Behold, I will put spirit into you and you will live"(Ezek. 37:4)
The catechetical word of John Chrysostom also mentions a changed attitude towards death. The saint calls not to weep over misery, for “the common Kingdom has arisen”; not to lose heart over sins, for “forgiveness has shone from the grave”; and not be afraid of death, “for Spas’s death freed us”
So, in Easter we have a cure for all ailments. And if, as Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) writes, we continue to weep, become despondent and fearful, this means that the light of Christ’s Resurrection has not yet illuminated all corners of our soul.
Moreover, one Easter a year is not enough to live by its light until next year. The lamp of faith will be blown out by the wind or it will run out of oil. In order for Easter to become the meaning-forming center of Christian life, the Church celebrates it weekly, fifty-two times a year. Every Sunday is Little Easter. This is evidenced by the reading of the corresponding texts of the Gospel at Matins, the Sunday hymn after the Gospel and all the wealth of the Octoechos. We should gather for Sunday service precisely as a celebration of victory over death, with love and gratitude to the Victorious Jesus, who is invisibly delivered by the angelic ranks at the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Death obviously destroys everything and conquers everyone. Among those defeated by her are strength, wisdom, beauty, talent, success, knowledge. Speaking honestly, you can live either without thinking about death, or having a cure for it. There is such a medicine. The holy martyr Ignatius, nicknamed the God-Bearer, went under escort to Rome, there to accept death for Christ from the teeth of wild animals in the circus arena. Along the way, he met with representatives of Churches and wrote letters to communities. In one of these letters, he talks about the Eucharist, and calls it “the medicine of immortality.” The True Body and Blood of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, which we receive at the Liturgy, is the medicine that unites our mortal nature with the Immortal Lord. You need to take communion often. But it is especially important to take immortal food before death. Elijah the prophet, after defeating the priests of Baal, was so tired of his soul that he asked for death. (1 Kings 19:4-9) As he fell asleep under a juniper bush, an angel touched him and commanded him to eat and drink. The Prophet ate the offered cake and drank water. The appearance of the Angel was repeated, and again the prophet ate and drank. And then he received a command to go to meet the Lord at Mount Horeb and walked without stopping for forty (!) days and nights.
We also have a long journey ahead of us to the throne of God. We, too, will need to be nourished with special food for this journey - the Body and Blood of the Lord.
She is not a wall, death. She is the door. Or rather, these doors are Christ, who said: “ Whoever enters by Me will be saved, and will go in and out, and will find pasture"(John 10:9) Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. Now, thanks to His atoning death, in Him and through Him we, through the gates of death, will enter another life. Let us enter, let us go out there into wideness and freedom, and, like Christ’s sheep, we will find rich pasture.
But you need to seriously think about this throughout your life, and not at the very end, like a failed student before an exam.
How to prepare for death and help the dying
Sangye Khadro
Many people do not want to hear, talk or even think about death. Why is this happening? Whether we like it or not, sooner or later each of us will certainly leave this world. And even before we face our own death, we will most likely have to experience the death of other people: relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. Death is a reality, a fact of life, and therefore isn’t it better to accept its inevitability and approach it with openness rather than with fear and denial?
Perhaps thinking about death makes us uncomfortable because we think that death will be a terrible, painful and depressing experience for us. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. Passing away can be a moment of learning and growth; a time when we can feel love more deeply, realize what is most valuable in our lives, strengthen our faith and devotion to religion and spiritual practices. Death may even give us insight into our true nature and the nature of all things, and this insight will enable us to be freed from all suffering.
Let's look at the example of Inta McKim, director of a Buddhist center in Brisbane, Australia.
Inta died of lung cancer in August 1997. Two months before her death, she wrote in a letter to her spiritual teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “Even though I am dying, this is the best time of my life! … For so long life seemed so hard, so difficult. But when you truly understand death, it turns out to be a great happiness. I would not want your death to go unnoticed for you, so that you would miss the great happiness that is born from the awareness of impermanence and death. These experiences are surprising and unexpected and are associated with great joy. This is the greatest time of my life, the most exciting adventure, the best party ever!”
Inta spent the last few months of her life devoting herself to spiritual practice. At the time of death, her mind was calm, she was surrounded by relatives and friends who prayed for her. There are many similar stories about lamas, monks, nuns and spiritual practitioners who managed to face death calmly, with dignity, and some of them even remained in meditation during and after death. With proper training and preparation, each of us can face death with a positive and peaceful attitude.
It is important to examine your thoughts, feelings and attitudes towards death and dying to determine whether they are realistic and constructive. How do you feel when you read or hear about the sudden and unexpected death of a large number of people? How do you feel when you learn that a relative or friend has died or been diagnosed with cancer? How do you feel when you see a hearse or drive past a cemetery? What does the verb “die” mean to you? Do you believe that there is something beyond this life, on the other side of death?
There are two unhealthy approaches to death. The first is fear, thoughts that death is a terrible, painful experience, or complete disappearance. This fear leads to denial and a desire to avoid thinking or talking about death. But is this right, considering that one day we will have to go through this? Isn't it better to accept the reality of death, learn to overcome your fears and prepare for the inevitable?
Another unhealthy attitude is the careless and frivolous attitude that causes us to say, “I am not afraid of death. I know that one day I will have to die, but everything will be okay, I can cope with it.” In my youth I had the same attitude, but one day I found myself in an earthquake zone and for several moments I was completely convinced that I was on the verge of death. And then I realized how wrong I was: I was terribly scared and absolutely not ready to die! In The Tibetan Book of the Living and the Dead, Sogyal Rinpoche quotes the words of one Tibetan master: “People often make the mistake of having a frivolous attitude towards death and thinking: “Death happens to everyone. It’s not a big deal, it’s a natural process, so I can handle it.” It’s a wonderful theory, but it’s only true until death approaches.”
If you find yourself with one of these approaches, then perhaps you should continue your research on the topic of death. Increasing knowledge about death and dying will help us reduce the fear of death (after all, we have a tendency to fear what we do not know, or what we cannot understand), and people with a frivolous attitude towards death will understand the importance of preparing for it.
First of all, let's look at the ideas about death in the Buddhist tradition.
From the book How to Prepare for and Spend Lent - How to Live in a Modern Spiritless World author Metropolitan John (Snychev)How to prepare for fasting Now we experience, as the captive Jews once did, a spiritual burden. And we remember, often we remember those sweet moments when the Lord visited us with His Divine grace, and, remembering, we cry. Slavery of the soul is very difficult. From him
From the book How to Prepare for Death and Help the Dying by Khadro SangyeHow to Prepare for Death: Four Tips for Life and Death Christine Longaker, an American woman with 20 years of experience working with the dying, has formulated four tips that will help us prepare for death while at the same time making our lives fulfilling and meaningful. These ones
From the book The Main Book on Raising Children, or How to Help a Child Be Happy by Viilma LuuleHelping the Dying Buddhist teachings say that helping another person die in a peaceful, calm state of mind? this is one of the greatest virtuous acts. This is because the moment of death is key to determining the next rebirth,
From the book Prayers for family and friends author Semenova Anastasia Nikolaevna From the book Doctor Words. The Big Secret Book of Slavic Healers author Tikhonov EvgeniyHOW TO PREPARE FOR A PILGRIMAGE WITH PRAYERS FOR HEALING Pilgrimage with prayers for healing has long been accepted by Orthodox Christians. On church holidays, especially when the day of one of the miraculous icons was celebrated, the sick flocked to the church,
From the book Eternal Answers author Krupchansky Adrian From the book Self-Sabotage. Overcome yourself by Berg Karen From the book Being Rich, What's Stopping You? author Sviyash Alexander GrigorievichHOW CAN I HELP? In our difficult times, it is not so often that you come across projects in which you want to take part. Because there are too many who talk, but too few who do. All the more valuable are initiatives that not only work fruitfully, but around which people gather
From the book It's Time to Wake Up. Effective methods for unlocking employee potential by Klock Kenneth From the book 500 objections with Evgeny Frantsev author Frantsev EvgeniyBelievers are no strangers to thinking about death. Ultimately, the “life of the future century” that opens just beyond the threshold of death constitutes the fruit of our prayers. But how can an old, but unchurched, “believer in his soul” person be prepared for death? What words to find so as not to scare away or offend, because old people are often very vulnerable? Otherwise, one gets the feeling that for the vast majority, preparing for death comes down to accumulating “funeral money.”
With love and prayer
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Correct preparation for death is our entire Christian life. If relatives know about the fatal illness of their relative, then they cannot deceive him, they must try to prepare him for confession, for repentance, to accept in his heart that he will soon leave this world for another world. How to do this, how to explain to a person of little faith his imminent migration to another world, without causing him despair, is the secret of love. A lover will always find the right words and the right time. The main thing, probably, is not to put pressure, not to rush, but to pray more for your neighbor, giving the Lord the opportunity to act.
Talk about the joy of communicating with God
It is important to pray from the heart for a person in order to understand exactly what and how we should “do and speak” in relation to him. The hidden life of a person’s soul is a mystery hidden in God, and you cannot help the cause of salvation with your good intentions alone. It is no coincidence that he says that it is great egoism to think that you can correct others. But if we sincerely pray for a person, if we seek the fulfillment of God’s will for him and want to take part in the work of his salvation, then the Lord will definitely help, make him understand and feel when the moment comes when we need to act; will send people to act as mediators, and finally will direct the heart of the oldest person to seek eternal life in God. But, in the end, this is the main thing.
It’s not even about “preparing for death,” as it seems to me. This way of posing the question is more appropriate for a consciously religious and church-going person - you won’t be frightened or surprised by talking about death. But for a person who is still far from religious and church life, it may be more important to tell about this life, about its height and fullness, about the joy of communion with God. And about the means of communion with this life: about heartfelt attention, about repentance and prayer, about confession and Communion. Then, perhaps, by the grace of God, the human soul will open up and turn to the Creator and will lament and cry over its sins, and may the Lord manage the rest.
To convey the idea that confession is the Sacrament of liberation
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How to prepare an old but unchurched person for death is not easy to answer. Each heart has only its own key, but in order to pick it up, you must be heartfelt yourself, so that both your word and your deed come from an open, pure heart. Heart responds to heart. And let everyone have their own words.
We need to talk not about death, but about God, in Whom there is eternal life. If you are with God, then dying is not scary
The whole point, apparently, is that we need to talk not about death, but about God, in Whom there is eternal life. If you are with God, then dying is not scary. Because with God, our Heavenly Father, our Joy, you will overcome any test. What exactly is death? Transition to another world. It’s just a transition, like crossing a bridge over an abyss, which is scary to walk on, but possible. We have One who will not let us out of His reliable right hand, will not let us fall down, as long as we do not break out ourselves.
Yes, we will part with earthly things, but we follow our grandfathers and great-grandfathers into a better world, the only question is whether the soul is ready to accept this better world. I recall the words of St. Cyril of Alexandria: “True death is not the one that separates the soul from the body, but the one that removes the soul from God.”
In a conversation with an older person, especially on such a topic, you cannot be assertive. Otherwise, it will turn out that we demand something from him: “You owe this and that.” But the soul of any person is influenced not by demands, but, above all, by sincerity and love. Does the elderly person himself want to talk about this? If not, then you cannot invade his inner world. All that remains is to sympathize, pray and support. Otherwise, he will simply close in on himself and the conversation will not work. It is important that a person opens up and talks about his fears, experiences, and doubts. Let him speak, and you and him look at it and discuss everything he says. Any of his experiences matter - about children, grandchildren, and now this is a reason to pray together for his family and friends, and then for himself.
At the end of life a person regrets something - and here it is, a reason for confession
Usually, on the threshold of transition to another world, a person regrets something, that he did not have time, did not do something, did not fulfill it, or stumbled in something. And here it is, a reason for confession and repentance. As a rule, people quickly agree to confession if they see sensitivity and understanding. The most important thing is to convey the idea that confession is the Sacrament of liberation. Confession will remove any internal burden, just repent before God: your conscience will find peace, and this is already a great happiness.
I will share my personal experiences related to the treatment of my oncology and the surgery I underwent. When you approach this milestone and don’t know what will happen next, then in the face of even just remembered death you see how petty and meaningless our grievances are! How stupid it is to be angry with others for something! These are some childish, frivolous things that for some reason make us angry, indignant, and ultimately harm ourselves. Approaching the border of death, you appear face to face in the face of eternity - how will you appear before God? After all, you will only be responsible for yourself. What are you like inside? What have you accumulated in your soul - good or evil, love or hatred, mercy or indignation? And then you begin to forgive everyone and repent before God.
It is not funeral money that should be saved, but goodness, virtues, purity and mercy of the heart. To prepare a person for death in a Christian way means to help him forgive and help him repent before God.
This is achieved through a warm, sincere conversation, communication, and understanding of the elderly person in his infirmities. Having learned to sincerely talk with older people, we learn to notice their experiences and anxieties, and through this, offer them something spiritual. There is simply no other way. And the essence of all preparation for death is one and only one - to save the person himself, that is, his precious immortal soul.
Help to clearly understand: man is immortal
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For a non-believer, celebrating the day of death is nonsense. Death is by no means associated with joyful memories, and in everyday life the thought of it, especially one’s own, is constantly pushed into the farthest corner of the soul, so as not to confuse or get on one’s nerves, although there is no more real thing than one’s own death. I can absolutely confidently promise everyone that he will definitely die, and much earlier than he wants.
What needs to be done so that one’s own death becomes not the “end of everything”, but the dormition? So that the thought of transition to eternity does not cause panic fear and horror, but becomes an event that we must be able to endure?
First of all, it is necessary to clearly understand: man is immortal. The body is mortal and perishable, but not the soul. The common thought with the statement: “No one returned from there” is a lie. We were returning. There is plenty of evidence of this, and not only in ancient legends.
A believer is aware of his bodily mortality and also fears it, but this fear is of a different order, of a different meaning. How will I appear before God? What spiritual burden does this transition face me with? After all, only spiritual perfections and spiritual dirty tricks are taken with you. What's coming? Should we just make excuses and hope for the prayers of those who will not forget us on the third day after the funeral, or did our earthly life “walk with God”?
There are no sinless people, but it’s one thing to string sins one on top of the other, saying: “He who is without sin,” and another thing to cry repentantly for them, wash them away with confession and Communion.
It is necessary to explain that a person who sincerely repents of his sin will be forgiven by God
To someone who has lived for many years and already understands that he is facing the last step of earthly life, it is necessary to explain that a person who has repented of a sin he has committed will be forgiven by God, no matter how great the sin. This does not mean that, having repented of murder, we can go and kill someone else with a pure soul. No. If we do this, then our repentance is insincere and it will be counted against us as condemnation, in what is called “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”
In order to appear before the Almighty with a soul “whiter than snow,” one needs church life, the desire to keep God’s commandments, and an unconditional understanding of one’s sinfulness. Under these conditions, our short-term life will become not only a time of work, worries, troubles and illnesses, but a conscious period of preparation for the future, eternal life, and death itself will move into the category of dormition.
Let us really, following the example of the Mother of God and our heavenly patron saints, strive for the Creator, and then, soon, we will be greeted not by a scary, bony old woman with a scythe, but by a radiant angel.
The obligation of “perjury” in relation to incurable and dying patients was a deontological (from the Greek deоn - duty, logos - word, teaching) norm of Soviet medicine. The doctor’s right to “perjury” in the name of ensuring the right of a terminally ill person to ignorance was considered as a feature of professional medical ethics in comparison with universal morality.
The basis for this feature is quite serious arguments. One of them is the role of the psycho-emotional factor of faith in the possibility of recovery, maintaining the struggle for life, and preventing severe mental despair. Since the fear of death was believed to hasten death by weakening the body in its fight against disease, reporting the true diagnosis of a disease was considered tantamount to a death sentence. However, there are cases where lying has done more harm than good. Objective doubts about the well-being of the outcome of the disease cause the patient anxiety and mistrust of the doctor. The attitude and reaction to the disease in patients is different; they depend on the emotional and psychological makeup and on the value and worldview culture of the person.
Is it possible to reveal the diagnosis to the patient or relatives? Maybe we should keep it a secret? Or is it advisable to inform the patient of a less traumatic diagnosis? What should be the measure of truth? These questions will inevitably arise as long as there is healing and death.
Currently, Russian specialists have access to numerous foreign studies on the psychology of terminally ill patients (terminus – end, limit). The conclusions and recommendations of scientists, as a rule, do not coincide with the principles of Soviet deontology. Studying the psychological state of terminally ill patients who learned about their terminal illness, Dr. E. Kübler-Ross and her colleagues came to the creation of the concept of “death as a stage of growth.” This concept is schematically represented by five stages through which a dying person (usually an unbeliever) passes. The first stage is the “stage of denial” (“no, not me,” “it’s not cancer”); the second stage is “protest” (“why me?”); the third stage is “request for a delay” (“not yet”, “a little more”), the fourth stage is “depression” (“yes, I’m dying”), and the last stage is “acceptance” (“let it be”) .
The “acceptance” stage is noteworthy. According to experts, the emotional and psychological state of the patient at this stage changes fundamentally. The characteristics of this stage include the following typical statements of once prosperous people: “In the last three months I have lived more and better than in my entire life.” Surgeon Robert Mack, a patient with inoperable lung cancer, describes his experiences - fear, confusion, despair, and finally states: “I am happier than I have ever been before. These days are now actually the best days of my life.” One Protestant minister, describing his terminal illness, calls it “the happiest time of my life.” As a result, Dr. E. Kübler-Ross writes that she “wished that the cause of her death was cancer; she does not want to miss out on the period of personal growth that terminal illness brings with it.” This position is the result of awareness of the drama of human existence: only in the face of death is the meaning of life and death revealed to a person.
The results of scientific medical and psychological research coincide with the Christian attitude towards a dying person. Orthodoxy does not accept false testimony at the bedside of a hopelessly ill, dying person. “Concealing information about a serious condition from a patient under the pretext of preserving his spiritual comfort often deprives the dying person of the opportunity to consciously prepare for death and spiritual consolation gained through participation in the sacraments of the Church, and also clouds his relationships with relatives and doctors with mistrust.”
Within the framework of the Christian worldview, death is the door to the space of eternity. A fatal illness is an extremely significant event in life, it is preparation for death and reconciliation with death, it is an opportunity to repent, pray to God for the forgiveness of sins, it is a deepening into oneself, intense spiritual and prayer work, it is the exit of the soul into a certain new qualitative state. Therefore, it is unlikely that an Orthodox person will be surprised by the prayers to God of Elder Porfiry from the monastery in Milesi about the sending down of cancer to him and about his joy in the disease, given to him at his request.
On this occasion, Abbot Nikon (Vorobiev, † 1963), one of the spiritual elders of our century, once wrote that cancer, from his point of view, is God’s mercy to man. A person doomed to death refuses vain and sinful pleasures, his mind is occupied with one thing: he knows that death is already close, already inevitable, and only cares about preparing for it - reconciliation with everyone, correction of himself, and most importantly - sincere repentance before God. Revealing the content and meaning of the Christian understanding of the harmfulness of false witness, the meaning of illness and death becomes the basis for many domestic doctors to revise the deontological norms of Soviet medical deontology. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, himself a former doctor, believes that it is necessary to draw the attention of modern doctors to the fact that during the course of an illness (we are talking about incurable diseases), a person must be prepared for death. At the same time, Bishop Anthony says: “Prepare the dying not for death, but for eternal life.”
Arguing that a doctor’s attitude towards incurable and dying patients cannot be simply scientific, that this attitude always includes compassion, pity, respect for a person, readiness to alleviate his suffering, readiness to prolong his life, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh draws attention to one “unscientific “approach – on skill and “readiness to let a person die.”
In 1992, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna (the widow of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the son of Emperor Alexander II, who was killed by a terrorist in 1905). In 1909, she created the Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy in Moscow, where she was not just the abbess, but participated in all its affairs as an ordinary sister of mercy - she assisted during operations, made bandages, consoled the sick, believing at the same time: “It is immoral to console the dying with false hope for recovery, it is better to help them move into eternity in a Christian way.”
Kalinovsky P. Transition. // The last illness, death and after. Ekaterinburg, 1994. P. 125.
Fundamentals of the social concept of the Russian Orthodox Church. // Information bulletin of the DECR of the Moscow Patriarchate. 2000. No. 8. P. 82.
Monk Agapius. The divine flame kindled in my heart by Elder Porfiry. M.: Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2000. P. 56.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Healing the body and saving the soul. // Human. 1995. No. 5. P. 113.
We come to the third main question: how to prepare for death? A wonderful way to strengthen your mind and heart in anticipation of this test is meditation. But the moment of death itself can be truly creepy.
Let's take a closer look at this and turn to the analogy of swimming on a stormy river. To overcome the most dangerous river rapids, professionals train persistently so as not to get lost among the rocks, streams and waterfalls.
It is one thing to imagine death, and quite another to remain calm at the moment of leaving this life. In order not to lose your head when meeting such a threshold, you need to learn to feel the water, or, as Carlos Castaneda’s teacher, Don Juan, advised, to always “feel death behind your shoulder.” The reminder to prepare for death and constantly think about it can be allegorical (for example, falling autumn leaves remind us of this) or completely unambiguous, like the inscription on a tombstone I saw in New England:
I was like you, a passerby, But you will die one day too. Know: this will happen to you too. Get ready to follow me.
A common misconception is that preparing for death reduces our quality of life. Actually this is not true. While working with the dying, I found many times that sitting at someone's deathbed made me feel especially alive. When Marcel Proust, the great connoisseur of human comedy, was asked by a newspaper reporter how people should behave in the face of world catastrophes threatening imminent death, he said the same thing:
1 Marcel Proust (1871-1922) - French writer, author of the series of novels “In Search of Lost Time,” in which the inner life of a person
It seems to me that if we are threatened with death, life will suddenly seem wonderful. Think how many projects, travels, novels, lessons passed us by because we lazily put everything off until later, being confident in a safe future.
But if all these threats disappeared forever, how wonderful it would be! ABOUT! If no cataclysm occurs, we will not miss the opening of a new exhibition in the Louvre, we will fall at the feet of Miss X, and we will go to India.
The cataclysm does not happen, and we do nothing of it, returning to normal life, the carelessness of which deprives the desire of the aroma. And yet, to love life today, we do not need disasters. It is enough to remember that we are human and that death can come to us tonight.
Proust means that the lack of awareness of our mortality prevents us from perceiving life as fully as we feel it in the face of imminent death. Death, like love, destroys the line between us and the Mystery, causing the ego's grip to weaken and the consciousness of the soul to emerge.
You should make an effort in your life to consciously accept the gift of death. The mind and heart must be trained to identify with the light of truth, and attention must be sharpened so that it does not wander even in the moment of greatest turmoil. To cross the border of life easier, you need to throw a lot of things overboard. It is necessary to settle your relations with those living and those who have passed on. It is not necessary to physically contact the person with whom we are connected; rather, we need to untie the knots on the threads of our connections in our hearts. Ask yourself an important question: “Do I want to die with this stain on my consciousness?” You will almost always answer “No”. Death provides a unique opportunity to see the dramas of the ego in their true light. Few problems are worth taking with you to the next world. By taking a rigorous inventory of our unnecessary attachments, we prepare for a calm departure.
You not only need to understand your relationships with other people,
depicted as a stream of consciousness.
but also to put their affairs in order - legally, medically and financially. If you do not want doctors to keep your body alive at any cost, or if you want to make your dead body's viable organs available to doctors (for transplant or research), sign a Living Will. with your dead body, do you prefer burial or cremation. It is advisable to discuss these details with those who will fulfill your wishes.
The need for such consultation was clearly demonstrated to me by the death of my aunt. My father's younger sister was a headstrong woman with a rebellious nature. When she was diagnosed with a brain tumor at sixty-something, she demanded that she be cremated, contrary to the laws of Judaism. She died, her wish was fulfilled, and the family wanted to bury her ashes next to other deceased relatives, but the cemetery administration objected - it was a Jewish cemetery. A serious problem arose, which was solved as follows: in the dead of night, my uncle and aunt, with a lantern, a shovel and an urn, climbed over the cemetery fence, dug a small hole in the family plot, placed the ashes there, covered their tracks and ran away. They were not caught, but, in principle, they could have been in serious trouble.
Some people find it difficult to make a will. There is a superstitious belief that a person will not die until he expresses his last will. This way of thinking can create problems for those we leave behind. My father was a lawyer, and I often heard from him about families and friends who had fallen out over litigation. The conscious aging program requires us to try not to harm anyone by dying and dying. We need to show the utmost care for those who will continue to live after we are gone. This attention to material affairs is part of our spiritual practice and symbolizes the final renunciation of worldly power.
It is also important to decide where we would like to die. This is one of the most
1 A “living will” is a document that specifies what medical care the maker would (or would not) want to receive in the event of a serious illness or disability.
important decisions, and it is advisable to make them before a crisis occurs. Do we want to die in a hospital, where all the attention is focused on medical care, or at home? How can we fill the room in which we die with a spiritual atmosphere so that it helps us remain conscious and makes our passing easier? For example, in Japanese “pure land” Buddhism 1 it is customary to place an image of the heavenly abode near the bed of a dying person so that the person can focus on it at the moment of departure.
You know, Rich, I think I'm dying.
“I think so too,” I replied. She asked:
What do you think death is like?
We talked a little about it and I said:
You seem to me like someone who is in a house that is collapsing. But our connection seems to be independent of home. You will continue to exist even when your body is no longer there. And our connection will also remain.
She said she felt the same way. We were in this together
1 “Pure Land” (jodo) and “truly pure land” (jodo-shin), or Amidism, arose in the 12th century. a movement in Japanese Buddhism that consists of worshiping the Lord of the promised “pure land” (the world of deities and righteous people) Amida Buddha (Sanskrit: Amitabha) and the constant repetition of his name.
psychological space was exactly as long as it took to understand this truth - just a moment - but such unity greatly consoled us.
The mother asked the doctors to allow her to return home from the hospital. She wanted to be back in her room. Eventually they reluctantly agreed and an ambulance brought my mother home. It was quite obvious that after ten years of fighting the disease, she was now dying. The last time I saw her was before I flew to California, where I was scheduled to give a lecture at the Santa Monica Civic Center on Sunday. Although I did not hope to see my mother again, at that time my obligations to the organizers of the lecture seemed more important to me than being at the bedside of a dying woman. Today I would have made a different decision, but I was young and ambitious, and now I have to live with the memory of that action.
The mother stayed at home for only one day, after which the doctors decided that she was too weak and, despite her requests, transported their patient back to the hospital. My father, who had a very difficult time accepting death, relied on the opinion of professionals: “Doctors know best.” I knew that this was wrong, that I should give my mother the opportunity to die where she felt more free, but I felt the pressure of those values that I did not share, and I was afraid of remaining in the minority. So I said nothing. Mom was taken to the hospital again, and the next night she died alone in an intensive care unit filled with machinery, separated from her grandchildren (who were not allowed to go there) and from her beloved home.
In the years since my mother's death, a hospice movement has taken shape in our country. For those whose illness or loneliness prevents them from dying at home, hospice is a good alternative to hospital. The idea of hospice is based on a more enlightened view of death as a natural process that should not be interfered with by certain medical methods. For those of us who want to approach death consciously, a hospice whose staff is free from the mindset of keeping the body alive at any cost can be a wonderful place.
There are many people involved in the work of hospices who deeply understand the significance of the dying process and try to spiritualize it.
I would not like to cast a shadow on doctors and hospitals. Work
medical professionals, most of whom have devoted their lives to the deeply spiritual (though they themselves may not be inclined to use the word “spiritual”) idea of alleviating suffering, cannot be overestimated.
Moreover, many hospitals are relaxing their rules, giving the patient more freedom.
In the seventies, ten years after my mother's death, I visited the ailing Debi Mathesen, the wife of Peter Mathesen. Debi was dying of cancer in one of the buildings of New York's Mountain Sinai Hospital. In New York, she visited a Zen center, and monks began to come to her room to meditate and help prepare for the moment of departure. They set up a small altar in one of the corners, and when they started singing, the hospital room turned into a small temple. Once, when Debi was visiting the monks, doctors came to see her during a round - with their folders, stethoscopes, professional cheerfulness and the question: “Well, how are we doing?” But the spiritual atmosphere in the room was so strong that the doctors stopped dead in their tracks, swallowing the end of the sentence, and quickly retreated in confusion! To leave her body, Debi was able to prepare such a sacred space that even starched white coats had no control over.
Although dying at home, in familiar surroundings, is much calmer, sometimes such an environment makes care difficult. The presence of loved ones and objects can influence dying. Not wanting to injure loved ones, a person wants to stay with them, despite the fact that nature requires otherwise. Because of this, a painful internal struggle can occur in the heart of the dying person: the soul strives to leave, and the ego clings to life. We need to remember this when our loved ones die and when our turn comes.
I was told about a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Michelle who was dying of cancer in the very hospital where her mother worked as a nurse. The mother tried her best to keep her only child alive, sleeping on the next bed and leaving her daughter only to go to the toilet. At one of these moments, Michelle whispered to the nanny: “Please tell mom to let me go.” But this was impossible, and Michelle died only when her mother went out to dinner one evening.
1 Peter Mathesen (born 1924) is an American writer, author of short stories and travel books.
We need to not only decide where we would like to die, but also decide how conscious we want to be at the moment of death. Of course, death brings so many surprises that it is difficult to predict exactly how it will happen, but you can at least state your preferences. This is not an easy topic. Although the science of pain management has made enormous strides in recent years, many pitfalls remain. Since doctors for the most part are interested exclusively in the body and pay little attention to the quality of consciousness of a dying person, we ourselves will have to determine the measure of suffering that we are willing to endure on our deathbed in order to remain in full consciousness, not intoxicated by narcotic drugs.
Is it not that doctors who ignore the need to face death with open eyes create another kind of suffering through their efforts to relieve the patient of pain? As a proponent of conscious aging and dying, I am inclined to answer this question in the affirmative. Practitioners of medicine, based on materialistic ideas, focus on what can be seen, felt and measured. Believing that with the death of the body the patient’s existence ends, doctors pay little attention to death and dying as such - as a phenomenon that affects the future incarnation. Therefore, we, as wise elders who try to look at ourselves from the point of view of the soul, cannot entrust our consciousness to doctors at the last hour.
The wisest thing to do would be to take your own pain medication. Experiments show that patients who are given the opportunity to take their own medications for pain use less of them, but at the same time report a decrease in suffering.
Recent studies in which women in labor were allowed to self-administer pain medication found that these women took about half the dose normally prescribed. There were two explanations for this: firstly, those giving birth could adjust the dose according to their needs, and secondly, they were much less afraid of pain, since they knew that they could control it. I don't
I doubt that if the same study had been carried out among dying people, a reduction in medication dosage would also have been recorded.
Since a significant amount of time passes between the onset of pain and receiving painkillers, many dying people I knew anticipated the onset of pain and overestimated its intensity - after all, they themselves were not given control over it. Some English hospitals allow patients to take painkillers as they wish, and we should be smart enough to demand as much autonomy as possible in this area. Transferring control of your consciousness to another person during the dying process - especially one whose philosophical values may be completely different from ours - is a frightening prospect.
No less important is the question of whether we have the right to independently choose the moment of our death. Currently we do not have such a right. If we want to die, we will have to go to Dr. Kevorkian1 or we will try to get more sleeping pills from our doctor. Neither solution can be considered satisfactory. Without intending to offend Dr. Kevorkian, I must note that the controversy surrounding his work brings into the public eye what should be a private matter and draws attention to the relatives of the patient at the most inopportune moment for them. Not that I underestimate the complexity of the ethical issues involved in the right-to-die debate, but it seems to me that it ignores what is most important: the wisdom of the dying person and his ability to make conscious choices. In my work, I have found that dying people have a clear understanding of the state of their body and mind (except in cases where the person is too weak to think clearly or when he loses consciousness from pain).
1 Jack Kevorkian (born 1928) is an American pathologist who received the nickname “Dr. Death” back in 1956 for his article “The Fundus and the Definition of Death,” which dealt with photographing the eyes of dying patients. In 1989, J. Kevorkian designed a “suicide machine”, and in the next ten years he helped more than a hundred terminally ill people voluntarily die. Tried to found a “suicide clinic.” His activities caused widespread public outcry and became the subject of numerous lawsuits.
To deny them the right to die the way they want, when they want, is to deny their wisdom or consider it irrelevant. From a materialistic point of view, such a prohibition is quite justified, but from a spiritual perspective it looks completely wrong.
Life is wonderful and precious, and if asked, I would certainly encourage everyone with any consciousness to live as long as possible. But, if inner wisdom demands something else, you need to listen to this voice. The more we weed our deepest wisdom, removing the weeds of ego voice, the better prepared we will be to make such a decision if we ever have to make one.
Unlike our society, in cultures such as Tibetan, the right of a person to determine the time of his own departure has never been questioned. According to tradition, when old lamas in Tibet feel that their time has come, they invite people to their departure from the body. At the appointed hour, the lama, immersed in meditation, stops his heart and stops breathing. So what, is this suicide? Immoral act? Or just knowing when to leave? It is up to the individual to decide here, not the state.
We should ask ourselves bluntly: is prolonging life at any cost always the wisest decision? In his old age, Thomas Jefferson1 wrote to a friend who was also over seventy: “The time comes when, in view of our condition and with an eye on those around us, it would be wise for us to leave, making room for new growth. We have lived our century and should not pretend to another.”
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