Christian comfort for the sorrowing
When a person near and dear to us departs from us, how can we not sorrow? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself sorrowed and even shed tears when His friend Lazarus died. Yet a natural sorrow at someone's death should not cast a Christian into despondency or cause him to murmur against God. Death is not the destruction of a person, but only the temporary separation of the soul from the body. Since it is a temporary condition, the New Testament Holy Scriptures and the early Christian writings refer to death as "sleep" (Acts 13:36) or "dormition (falling asleep)," as in the name of the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. Death is called sleep in relation to the body; the soul of the dead person continues its conscious life. Its' mental and other spiritual faculties do not weaken after death; on the contrary, they receive greater lightness and mobility, not being constricted by the body.
In order not to sorrow excessively over the loss of a loved one, we should consider that physical death also has a positive aspect. It brings man relief from his daily labors and from all the sorrows, illnesses and fears which fill our earthly existence. It is a passage to a better world, where eternal light shines, where the truth of God reigns, where there is no grief, and where the souls of the faithful find everlasting joy and peace.
The main source of comfort for a Christian should be that all of us will rise from the dead, meet those dear to us and live eternally. The Son of God came to earth to restore to the human race the immortal life which it had lost because of sin. The Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning of our resurrection. We celebrate the feast of Pascha (Easter) with such joy because "we celebrate the annihilation of death, the destruction of Hell, the beginning of another life, which is eternal" (from the Paschal Canon).
The Apostle Paul comforts Christians who have lost their loved ones in these words: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him" (1 Thes. 4:13-14). The Apostle further explains that we who remain among the living will not receive our reward before those who have died, because the fullness of the reward will come to all the righteous at the same time: "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [i.e., go before] them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. 4:15-18).
Elsewhere, the Apostle sets forth the Christian view of life and death in these words: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight :) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:1-8).
These and similar thoughts will be our comfort when we lose people dear to us. Their transfer to another world reminds us that our own end is approaching. Therefore, in praying for them let us pray for ourselves as well, that we may be counted worthy of a Christian ending to our life, painless, blameless and peaceful, and that we may receive a favorable verdict at the dread judgment seat of Christ.
The necessity of praying for the dead
In order to appreciate the power of prayers for the dead, it must be understood that death interrupts only the physical contact among people; spiritual contact continues. This contact is realized through prayer. The Gospel teaches us that prayer, coupled with faith, has great power. In the words of our Lord, it can even move mountains. The Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles taught Christians to pray for one another.
The Gospels and the other books of the New Testament contain numerous examples of how the prayers of some helped others. Thus, according to the faith of the nobleman, the Lord healed his son (John 4:46-53); by the faith of the Canaanite woman her possessed daughter was healed (Mt. 15:21-28); by the faith of a father his possessed son, who was deaf and mute, was healed (Mk. 9:17-27); at the request of friends the Lord forgave and healed the paralytic, whom they lowered from the roof with ropes (Mk. 2:2-12); and by the faith of the Roman centurion his servant was healed (Mt. 8:5-13). Furthermore, the Lord performed most of these miraculous healings at a distance, in absentia. The Holy Evangelist John the Theologian urges us to turn to God in prayer, with faith that God will fulfill our request. As he says, "And this is the confidence that we have in Him [the Son of God], that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us" (1 John 5:14).
Since prayer possesses the power of grace, it knows no boundaries and does not grow weaker with distance. It is the result of love, and, like a ray of light, it penetrates men's souls, uniting those who pray with God and with one another. An ancient story teaches a good lesson. Once St. Macarius of Egypt found a human skull while walking in the desert. When Abba Macarius touched the skull with a palm branch, a voice came from the skull. When the elder asked, "Who are you?," the skull answered, "I was a pagan priest and lived in this place. Abba Macarius, have pity on us who are in eternal torment, and pray for us, for your prayer brings us comfort." The elder asked, "What comfort comes to you from my prayers?" The skull answered, "When you pray for us, light appears, and we begin to see one another."
Thus, prayer joins our world with another world, where the angels, the saints and our departed relatives and friends dwell. Since the moment of the resurrection of Christ death has lost its former fatality; instead, it has become the beginning of a new life. Now, as St. Paul teaches: "Neither death, nor life...nor height, nor depth...shall be able to separate us from the love of God... For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living" (Rom. 8:38-39; Rom. 14:8-9). For this reason it is not only possible, but even necessary, to pray for the dead as well as for the living; for, according to the words of the Saviour, to God all are alive (cf. Lk. 20:38).
Christians who have departed from this world do not sever their ties to the Church to which they belonged during their life. If they are righteous, they have the freedom to pray for us at the throne of God; if imperfect, they require our prayers. The Apostle Paul compared the Church to a high mountain, whose base rests on the earth while its peak reaches the sky. "But ye come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant" (Heb. 12:22-24). In other words, according to the apostle, between the earthly and the heavenly Church there exists a living and close relationship. Faith in this unity and in the power of prayer serves as the basis for a practice which goes back to the apostolic age: to maintain ties with the dead, to turn to the holy martyrs and the saints with prayers for help, and also to remember the dead at the Proskomedia and in prayers for their repose.
A note about the life after death
The Sacred Scriptures do not tell us how the particular judgment is carried out after the death of a man. We may only get a partial understanding of it from certain phrases which are found in the word of God. It is natural to think that at the particular judgment the good and evil angels play a large role in deciding the fate of man after death. The good angels are the instruments of God's grace, while the evil angels, or demons, are allowed by God to be the instruments of His justice. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, it is said that Lazarus "was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" (Luke 16:22). In the parable of the rich fool, the rich man is told: "This night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke 12:20). According to Saint John Chrysostom, the evil powers will drag it to judgment. In the words of our Lord, the angels of "these little ones ... do always behold the face of [the] Father Which is in heaven" (Matt.18:10). At the end of the world the Lord will send forth His angels, who will separate the wicked from the just and will cast them into the furnace of fire (cf. Matt. 13: 49-50). At the same time, our adversary, the devil "as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (1Peter 5:8); the very air is as if filled with the spirits of wickedness in high places, and their ruler is called "the prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 6:12; 2:2). Based on these indications of Sacred Scripture, the holy Fathers of the Church from ancient times have depicted the path of the soul separated from the body as a path through spiritual spaces where the powers of darkness seek to swallow up those who are spiritually weak; therefore, the soul needs for its defense the heavenly angels and the support of the prayers of the living members of the Church. Among the ancient Fathers Saints Ephrem the Syrian, Athanasius the Great, Macarius the Great, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and others all mention these things.
These ideas are developed in greater detail by Saint Cyril of