How the soul lives after death
What are ordeals?
In the 19th century, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, speaking about the state of the soul after death, wrote: “It should, however, be noted that, just as in general in the depiction of objects of the spiritual world for us clothed in flesh, more or less sensual, humanoid features are inevitable, so, in particular, they are inevitably admitted in the detailed teaching about the ordeals that we undergo the human soul when separated from the body. Therefore, we must firmly remember the instruction given by the angel Venerable. Macarius of Alexandria, as soon as he began to speak about ordeals: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” It is necessary to imagine the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but as much as is possible for us in the spiritual sense, and not get attached to the particulars that are given by different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, despite the unity of the basic thought about the ordeals.” These extremely significant words of the angel cannot in any way diminish when we come into contact with messages about that world. For our human psyche is very inclined to take images for reality, as a result of which completely distorted ideas are created not only about heaven, hell, ordeals, etc., but also about God, about spiritual life, about salvation. These distortions easily lead a Christian into paganism. And a pagan Christian - what could be worse?
What earthly and heavenly things are being talked about here? About ordeals, which, despite the simplicity of their earthly depiction in Orthodox hagiographic literature, have a deep spiritual, heavenly meaning. There is nothing like this in any of the religious teachings. Even Catholicism, with its dogma of purgatory, distorted the picture of the posthumous state of man. Purgatory and ordeals are fundamentally different things. Purgatory, in the views of Catholic theologians, is a place of torment to compensate for the lack of human merit in satisfying the justice of God. Ordeal is a trial of conscience and a test of the spiritual state of the soul in the face of God’s love, on the one hand, and devilish passionate temptations, on the other.
Church tradition says that there are twenty ordeals - twenty certain tests of the state of the soul before, if you like, its home, which we call the Kingdom of God. These are twenty steps of ascent to this house, which can become the steps of a person’s fall - depending on his condition.
Somewhere in the 50s, one bishop died - an old, sweet, pleasant man, but it was difficult to call him a spiritual and ascetic. His death was very significant - he kept looking around him and saying: “Everything is wrong, everything is wrong. Not like that at all!”
His surprise is understandable. Indeed, although we all understand that “everything is wrong” there, we nevertheless involuntarily imagine that life in the image and likeness of this life. We imagine both hell and heaven according to Dante, and the ordeal, again, in accordance with those pictures that we look at with curiosity in simple brochures. Whether we want it or not, we cannot in any way renounce these earthly ideas.
And, surprisingly, modern science can provide us with some help in understanding this issue.
For example, nuclear physicists who study the world of elementary particles argue that in the macroworld - that is, in the world in which we live - there are no concepts that can adequately express the realities of the microworld. Therefore, in order to somehow present them to the general public, physicists are forced to find and invent words, names and images taken from our usual experience. True, the picture sometimes emerges as fantastic, but understandable in its constituent parts. Well, for example, imagine - time flows backwards. What does it mean - backwards, how can this time flow in reverse? First the duck falls, and then the hunter shoots? This is absurd. But one of the theories of quantum mechanics points in this way to the processes occurring in the intra-atomic world. And it seems that we are beginning to understand something... although without understanding anything.
Or take the concept of a wave particle, called “waveicle” in English. If you think about it, this is a rather absurd expression - a wave cannot be a particle, and a particle cannot be a wave. But with the help of this paradoxical concept, which does not fit into the framework of our common sense, scientists try to express the dual nature of the nature of matter at the level of the atom, the dual aspect of elementary particles (which, depending on the specific situation, appear either as particles or as waves). Modern science offers many such paradoxes. How are they useful to us? By what they show: if a person’s capabilities are so limited in knowing and expressing in “human language” the realities of this world, then, obviously, they are even more limited in understanding the world of that world. This is the main thing to keep in mind when trying to comprehend the same ordeals and, in general, the posthumous existence of the soul. The realities there are completely different, everything there is not the same as here.
Posthumous exam for goodness
According to church teaching, after a three-day stay at the tomb, the soul of the deceased contemplates the heavenly abodes from the 3rd to the 9th day, and from the 9th to the 40th day it is shown the torment of hell. How can we understand these earthly images, “earthly things”?
The soul, being by nature a resident of that world, freed from the plump body, becomes capable of seeing that world in a completely different way, characteristic of it, in contrast to the body. There everything is revealed to the soul. And if, as the Apostle Paul writes, in earthly conditions we see “as if through a glass darkly,” then there “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12), that is, as it really is. This vision or knowledge, in contrast to earthly knowledge, which is mainly external in nature and often purely rational, after the death of the body acquires a different character - participation in what is known. In this case, participation means the unity of the knower with the known. So the soul there enters into unity with the world of spirits, for it itself is spiritual in this sense. But with what spirits does the soul unite? We can believe that each virtue has its own spirit, its own angel, just as each passion has its own spirit, its own demon. But more on that later.
For some reason, it is usually believed that the soul is tested only when it comes to its passions, that is, in the period from the 9th to the 40th day. However, there is no doubt that the soul is tested for everything: both for good and for evil.
So after three days, a kind of personality test begins. First - in the face of good. The soul follows the path of all the virtues (according to the Apostle, these are “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, meekness, self-control,” etc. - Gal. 5; 22). For example, the soul finds itself in the face of meekness. Will she perceive it as that precious quality that she strove for and that she was looking for in her earthly life, although she could not acquire it in those conditions, or, on the contrary, will she be repelled by meekness as something alien and unacceptable? Will she unite with the spirit of meekness or not? Thus, during six earthly days there will be a special test of the soul in the face of all virtues.
At the same time, I would like to note that every virtue is beautiful, for God Himself is ineffable Beauty, and the soul with all its fullness sees there the beauty of these properties of God. And in this, if you like, “exam of goodness,” the soul is tested: has it, in the conditions of earthly freedom, acquired at least some desire for this eternal Beauty?
And the exam for evil
A similar test, the same examination of the soul continues, from the 9th to the 40th day. A stage begins, which is usually called ordeals. There are twenty of them, and much more is said about them than about contemplating the beauty of virtues. The reason for this, apparently, is that the overwhelming majority of people are immeasurably more enslaved by passions than they are involved in virtues. That is why this exam requires more time. Here the soul reveals the full power of each of its passions - hatred, envy, pride, deceit, fornication, gluttony...
We all know what the fire of passion means - despite reason, despite the desire for good, despite even one’s own well-being, a person suddenly submits, for example, to insane anger, greed, lust, and so on! Submits to a “favorite” passion or passions. This very thing begins there, but in the face of not just conscience, not just convictions - but in front of that Shrine itself, in the face of that Beauty that has just been revealed to the soul in all its possible completeness. It is here that the power of passion that a person acquired during earthly life is revealed in its entirety. Therefore, the one who did not fight passion, but, moreover, served it, for whom it became the meaning of his life, will not be able to renounce it even in the face of God’s Love itself. So there is a breakdown at the ordeal and the descent of the soul into the bosom of a meaningless and unquenchable fire of burning passion. For under earthly conditions passion could sometimes still obtain food for itself for some time. There the torment of Tantalus really opens up.
By the way, they're starting ordeal from the most seemingly innocent sin. From idle talk. From something to which we usually do not attach any importance. The Apostle James says exactly the opposite: “... the tongue... is an uncontrollable evil; it is filled with deadly poison” (James 3; 8). And the Holy Fathers and even pagan sages call idleness and its natural and usual manifestation - idle talk - the mother of all vices. Rev. John of Karpafsky, for example, wrote: “Nothing upsets a usually good mood more than laughter, jokes and idle talk.”
The twenty ordeals cover, I would say, twenty categories of passions, not specific sins, but passions, each of which includes many varieties of sins. That is, each ordeal covers a whole nest of related sins. Let's say theft. It has many types: direct, when someone got into a person’s pocket, and accounting additions, and inappropriate, in one’s own interests, use of budget funds, and bribes for the purpose of profit, etc. and so on. The same applies to all other ordeals. So - twenty passions, twenty exams for sins.
In very vivid, earthly concepts and expressions it is written about the ordeals in the life of St. Basil the New, where Blessed Theodora talks about what happened to her beyond the boundaries of earthly life. And reading her story, you involuntarily remember the wonderful words of the angel: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” Blessed Theodora saw monsters there, lakes of fire, and terrible faces, heard terrible screams, and observed the torment to which sinful souls were subjected. All these are “earthly things.” In reality, as the angel warned us, this is only a “weak image,” a weak semblance of those completely spiritual (and in this sense, “heavenly”) events that happen to a soul that is unable to reject passions. Everything is wrong there!
But why, in this case, is it shown this way? The reason is that there are no other means to warn a person still living about the suffering that awaits everyone who tramples on conscience and truth. For example, how to explain the effect of radiation to a person who has no idea about it and does not understand its destructive effect on the body? Apparently, it would be necessary to say that terrible invisible rays emanate from this place; a pagan would be more likely to understand if he was warned that evil spirits live here, or, on the contrary, this place is sacred and should not be approached...
- Do you understand, man?
- Got it.
What did he understand? Not what radiation is, not how it works, but most importantly: there is a serious danger here, you need to be extremely careful. So it is with paintings of ordeals. Yes, there is suffering, and it is caused by an unrighteous lifestyle.
But Blessed Theodora also speaks about demons who torment the soul for sins.
Uniting with the Spirit of God or with tormenting demons
Entire iconographic cycles were created based on the life of St. Theodora. Perhaps many have seen books with pictures depicting various tortures at ordeals. The artists' imagination is very strong and vivid, and therefore these pictures are impressive. When you look, what is not happening there: what torment, torture! And there really is torment there, but it is of a completely different nature. This is important to know, because it is of great importance for understanding the afterlife of all people, including non-Christians.
So, we come to the question of the action of demons on the soul in the afterlife. A very interesting thought on this issue was expressed by Saint Theophan the Recluse (Govorov) in his interpretation of the 80th verse of the 118th Psalm (“Be my heart blameless in your justification, so that I will not be ashamed”). This is how he explains the last words: “The second moment of non-shame is the time of death and going through ordeals. No matter how wild the thought of ordeals may seem to smart people, they cannot be avoided. What are these Mytniks looking for in those passing by? Whether they have their goods. What is their product? Passion. Therefore, whoever has an immaculate heart and is free from passions, they cannot find anything to which they could become attached; on the contrary, the quality opposite to them will strike them themselves like lightning arrows. To this, one of the little learned people expressed another thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively and charmingly, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, during earthly life, passions are expelled from the heart and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her. This means that it is very doubtful that the soul, while it still has sympathies for the objects of any passions, will not be ashamed at the ordeal. The shame here is that the soul itself is thrown into hell.”
Thought of St. Theophan follows the instructions of St. Anthony the Great. I will quote his wonderful words: “God is good and impassive and unchanging. If anyone, recognizing that it is blessed and true that God does not change, is nevertheless perplexed as to how He (being such) rejoices over the good, turns away from the evil, is angry at sinners, and when they repent, is merciful to them; then to this it must be said that God does not rejoice and is not angry: for joy and anger are passions. It is absurd to think that the Divine would be good or bad because of human affairs. God is good and does only good things, but does not harm anyone, being always the same; and when we are good, we enter into communication with God, out of similarity with Him, and when we become evil, we separate from God, out of dissimilarity with Him. Living virtuously, we become God's, and when we become evil, we become rejected from him; and this does not mean that He has anger against us, but that our sins do not allow God to shine in us, but unite us with demons tormentors. If we then gain permission from our sins through prayers of good deeds, this does not mean that we have pleased God and changed Him, but that through such actions and our turning to God, having healed the evil that exists in us, we again become capable of tasting God’s goodness; so to say: God turns away from the wicked is the same as saying: the sun is hidden from those deprived of sight.”
In short, when we lead a correct (i.e. righteous) life, live according to the commandments and repent of violating them, then our spirit unites with the Spirit of God, and good things happen to us. When we act against our conscience and violate the commandments, our spirit becomes one with the tormenting demons, and thus we fall into their power. And according to the degree of our voluntary consent to sin, our voluntary submission to their power, they torment us. And if there is still repentance on earth, then it is already too late. But it turns out that it is not God who punishes us for our sins, but we ourselves, through our passions, give ourselves into the hands of tormentors. And their “work” begins - they are a kind of predators or sewer trucks that cleanse the environment of sewage. This is what happens to the soul after death at the ordeal.
The ordeal, therefore, is essentially nothing more than a kind of test of a person’s passions. Here a person shows himself - who he is, what he strived for, what he wanted. But they are not only a test - they are also a guarantee of the possible purification of the soul through the prayers of the Church.
“Passion a thousand times stronger than on earth...”
But, apparently, it is necessary to say once again what it is passion. We know about sin: for example, a person deceived, stumbled, this happens to everyone. Passion is something else - something that already pulls towards itself, and sometimes so irresistibly that a person cannot cope with himself. Although he understands perfectly well that this is bad, that it is bad, that it is harmful not only for the soul (although he most often forgets about the soul), but also for the body, he cannot cope with himself. In the face of conscience, in the face, if you like, of one’s own good, he cannot cope! This state is referred to as passion.
Passion is a truly terrible thing. Look what people do in the madness of passion, in the slavery of passion. They kill, maim, betray each other.
The Slavic word “passion” means, first of all, suffering, as well as a strong desire for something forbidden, sinful - that is, ultimately, also suffering. Passions are suffering. Christianity warns that all passions, being sinful, bring suffering to a person, and only suffering. Passion is a deception, it is a drug, it is a delight! After death, the real action of passions, their real cruelty, is revealed.
All our sins are committed when the soul is united with the body. A soul without a body can neither do good nor sin. The Fathers definitely say that the seat of passions is the soul, and not the body. The roots of passions are not in the body, but in the soul. Even the grossest bodily passions are rooted in the soul. That is why they do not go out, do not disappear with the death of the body. With them a person leaves this world.
How do these unresolved passions manifest themselves in that world? I will quote the thought of Abbot Nikon (Vorobiev): “Passions a thousand times stronger than on earth will burn you like fire without any possibility of quenching them.”. This is extremely serious.
Here on earth it is easier with our passions. So, I fell asleep - and all my passions fell asleep. For example, I get so angry at someone that I’m ready to tear him to pieces. But time passed and the passion gradually subsided. And soon they became friends. Here you can fight vices. In addition, passions are covered up by our physicality and therefore do not act in full force - or rather, rarely and, as a rule, they do not act this way for very long. But there a person, freed from physicality, finds himself confronted with their full action. Complete! Nothing interferes with their manifestation, the body does not close them, no sleep distracts them, no fatigue extinguishes them! In a word - continuous suffering, since the person himself does not have “any opportunity to satisfy them”! Plus, demons seduce us and then inflame and multiply the effect of our passions.
I was told how during World War II, after the Leningrad blockade was lifted, a woman ran up to a huge line for bread in the rear and hysterically shouted: “I’m from Leningrad.” Everyone immediately parted when they saw her crazy eyes, her terrible state. This is what only one passion is. Passion is a serious illness, the cure of which requires a lot of work and a long time. That is why it is so dangerous not to fight sin - often repeated, it turns into passion, and then real trouble comes not only in this life, but, what is a thousand times worse, in the next. And when a person has a whole bunch of passions? What will happen to him in Eternity?! If only this one thought were deeply rooted in us, we would, without a doubt, begin to approach our lives completely differently.
That is why Christianity, as a religion of love, reminds us: remember, man, you are not a mortal, but an immortal being, and therefore prepare for immortality. And the great happiness of Christians is that they know about this and can prepare. On the contrary, what horror does the unbeliever and the ignorant face after death!
Twenty ordeals reveal the state of a person’s soul, they are nothing more than twenty kind of litmus tests, twenty, if you like, exams, at which all its spiritual content is revealed and its fate is determined. True, it is not yet final. There will be more prayers from the Church, there will be a Last Judgment.
Like connects with like. The Power of Repentance
Each stage of ordeal is a test of the strength of the rootedness of a certain passion in a person, when its full strength is revealed. The one who did not fight passion, who obeyed it, who lived this passion, cultivated it, gave all the strength of his soul to its cultivation - falls, breaks down in this ordeal. And this - either a fall or going through an ordeal - is no longer determined by the effort of a person’s will, but by the action of the spiritual state prevailing in him. Abbess Arsenia, one of the remarkable ascetics at the turn of the 20th century (1905), wrote: “When a person lives an earthly life, he cannot know how enslaved his spirit is, depending on another spirit, he cannot fully know this because he has a will with which he acts as he pleases. But when the will is taken away with death, then the soul will see to whose power it is enslaved. The Spirit of God brings the righteous into eternal abodes, enlightening them, illuminating them, idolizing them. The same souls who had communion with the devil will be possessed by it.”
In other words, if we on earth do not fight small temptations, do not resist their pressure, then we thereby weaken our will and gradually destroy it. And there, in the face of a 1000-fold greater power of passion, our will will be taken away altogether, and the soul will be in the power of the tormenting demon. It is this last point that I would like to say again.
If we turn to the description of the ordeals, we find the spirits of evil present there everywhere – in different forms. Blessed Theodora even describes the appearance of some of them, although it is clear that these are only weak semblances of their true essence. The most serious thing - we have already emphasized this - is that, as Anthony the Great writes, the soul, submitted to passion, unites there with tormenting demons. And this happens, so to speak, naturally, for like always connects with like. In the conditions of earthly life, we also unite with people of the same spirit. Sometimes they wonder - how did these people get together? Then, upon closer acquaintance, it turns out: they have the same spirit! They are unanimous. A single spirit united them.
When the soul goes through ordeals, it is tested by the passion of each ordeal, by its spirits, tormenting demons, and, according to its state, it is either torn away from them or united with them, falling into the most severe suffering.
There is another side to this suffering. That world is a world of true light, in which all our sins will be revealed to everyone; in the face of all friends, acquaintances, and relatives, everything that is crafty, base, and unscrupulous will suddenly be revealed. Just imagine such a picture! That is why the Church calls everyone to prompt repentance. Repentance in Greek is metanoia, that is, a change of mind, way of thinking, a change in the goals of one’s life, aspirations. Repentance also means hatred of sin, aversion to it.
This is how wonderfully St. speaks about this. Isaac the Syrian: “For God knew by His merciful knowledge that if absolute righteousness were required of men, then only one in ten thousand would be found who<мог бы>enter the Kingdom of Heaven, He gave them a medicine suitable for everyone,<а именно>repentance, so that every day and at every moment there will be a means of correction available to them through the power of this medicine and so that through contrition they will wash themselves at all times from any defilement that may happen, and be renewed every day through repentance.”
What does true repentance give? Take Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Look: he was ready to go to hard labor, even to go with joy, just to atone for his evil, to return to his previous state of soul. This is what repentance is: it really is a change of the soul, its salvation.
And even a small striving for good and repentance for evil can become the drop that tips the scales towards God. This drop, or, as Barsanuphius the Great said, this “copper obol”, quite insignificant, becomes the guarantee that the Lord unites with such a soul and defeats the evil that is present in it.
This is the enormous significance of sincere repentance and sincere struggle in this life of ours. They become the key to saving the passage of ordeals.
We Christians must be infinitely grateful to God for the fact that He revealed to us in advance the posthumous secret of the ordeals, so that here we would struggle with our bad inclinations, fight and repent. For if, I repeat, a person has even a small germ of such a struggle, if there is at least some compulsion to live according to the Gospel, then the Lord Himself will fill in what is missing and free us from the hands of destroying demons. The word of Christ is true: “You have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things; enter into the joy of your Master” (Matthew 25:23).
Christianity provides the greatest means of human salvation - repentance. The Lord wants us not to suffer here, and especially after death. Therefore, the Church calls: man, before it’s too late, take care of yourself...
We are free to do good and evil
Why, when talking about a person’s posthumous path, do we constantly emphasize that it is a test of the soul - first for good, and then for evil? Why the test?
Because God, in the very creation of man, gave him His image, which presupposes such freedom that God Himself cannot touch. For He needs free individuals, not slaves. Salvation is His free election, out of love for truth, holiness and beauty, and not for the sake of “spiritual” pleasures or the threat of punishment.
Why did God humble himself to the point of the cross, and not appear to the world as an all-powerful, wisest, invincible king? Why did He come to people not as a patriarch, not a bishop, not a theologian, not a philosopher, not a Pharisee, but as a beggar, homeless, from an earthly point of view, the last person who does not have a single external advantage over any person? The reason for this is obvious: power, power, external splendor, glory would certainly captivate the whole world, everyone would slavishly worship Him and “accept” His teaching in order to receive as much as possible... bread and circuses. Christ wanted nothing but the truth to attract a person to Him, nothing external to replace it, not to stand in the way of its acceptance. It is no coincidence that the Lord uttered such meaningful words: “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth; everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). External effects are idols that throughout human history have been trying to replace God.
Unfortunately, much of church life has followed the path of external, so-called “church” splendor, or rather purely worldly splendor. This brings to mind the words of one American Protestant, who, not only without hesitation, but, on the contrary, proudly shared: “In our church, everything should be entertaining in order to attract people.” And the spiritual law is known: the more outside, the less inside. Even at the beginning of the 16th century, the Monk Nilus of Sorsky tried to defend non-covetousness in monasticism, spoke out against all luxury, wealth and estates in the Church as degrading and unnatural, but his voice was not accepted, or rather, was rejected - the process of secularization of Christian consciousness turned out to be irreversible. And it is quite obvious that it led to the split of the 17th century, Peter I, the October Revolution, and at the end of the 20th century - to the so-called “perestroika”. And it will lead to even worse. For the Church is the “leaven” of society, and its spiritual state determines the internal and external well-being of the people.
Saint Philaret of Moscow in the 19th century said with bitterness: “How boring it is to see that monasteries all want pilgrims, that is, they themselves seek entertainment and temptation. True, sometimes they lack methods, but what they lack more is non-covetousness, simplicity, hope in the Gods, and a taste for silence.” And he: “If war had to be declared on any clothing, then, in my opinion, not on the hats of priestly wives, but on the magnificent robes of bishops and priests. At least this is the first thing, but this was forgotten. “Let your priests, O Lord, be clothed with righteousness.” Perhaps even now there will be a saint who will say similar things about modern church life.
So the Lord, with his coming, showed that he is not only the greatest Love; but also the greatest Humility, and He cannot exert any, even the slightest, pressure on human freedom, therefore salvation is possible for everyone who freely accepts God and responds to Love with love. From here it becomes clear why earthly living conditions are so important. Only while in the body is a person fully human and can do good or evil, sin, break the commandments, or repent and lead a righteous life. Our freedom, our choice, is exercised on earth. After death there is no longer a choice, but the choice made on earth is realized, and the fruits of earthly life are revealed. The soul simply finds itself faced with the result of all human earthly activities. Therefore, there, in another world, a person is already powerless to change himself - he can only be helped. But more on that later.
On this day, one might say, the initial outcome of life is summed up. 40th day, if you like, is the first gathering of the fruits of a person’s earthly life. The Church teaches that the soul presents itself to the throne of God, before which God’s determination about man takes place. But it would also be correct to say: man’s self-determination occurs in the face of God. After all, God does not commit any violence against any person. God is the greatest, ultimate Love and Humility. Therefore, when on the 40th day the soul comes before God in some special way, then, apparently, here its spiritual state is fully revealed to it and its natural union occurs either with the Spirit of God or with the spirits of tormenting passions. This is what the Church calls private court, a private definition of personality.
Only this judgment is unusual - it is not God who judges and condemns man, but man, finding himself in the face of the Divine shrine, either ascends to Him, or, on the contrary, falls into the abyss. And all this no longer depends on his will, but on that spiritual state that was the result of his entire earthly life.
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):
Perfect Christians, having purified their senses, seemed to see the sky, and saw in the sky and in the air what we do not see with our white eyes. So, suddenly, through the action of the Holy Spirit, the holy First Martyr Stephen saw the heavens open before his suffering death, standing in a large meeting of Jews hostile to Christ and Christianity. “But Stephen,” says the Holy Scripture, “who was filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up into heaven, and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said: Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55, 56).
They saw the sky and the entrance of their teacher into the heavenly holy gates disciples of Macarius the Great, of course, just like Stephen, through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.
Saw Venerable Isidore of Skete, who was present at the death of the young ascetic Zechariah, the gates of heaven opened for the dying man and exclaimed: “Rejoice, my son Zechariah: the gates of heaven have opened for you!”
I saw, as mentioned above, Rev. John Kolov the radiant path from earth to heaven, along which the Angels lifted up the soul of the deceased.
When I opened my spiritual eyes, I saw the sky opening and a lightning-fast Angel descending from there. mother of Elder Paisius Nyametsky, inconsolably mourning the departure of her son to monasticism. When feelings that are no longer bound by the fall begin to act, their action becomes unusually sophisticated, the very circle of action takes on vast dimensions - the space for them shrinks. The above-mentioned visions of the saints serve as sufficient proof of this; but for greater clarity, we do not stop to imagine other spiritual experiences.
Saint Anthony the Great, who lived in one of the deserts of Egypt, not far from the Red Sea, saw a soul ascended to heaven by Angels St. Ammon, who labored at the other tip of Egypt, in the Nitrian desert. The disciples of the Great noticed the day and hour of the vision, then they learned from the brethren who came from Nitria that the Monk Ammon died precisely on that day and hour on which the Monk Anthony the Great saw the ascension of his soul. The distance between the deserts required thirty days of travel for a walker. It is obvious that the vision of a Christian, renewed by the Holy Spirit and reached a high degree of perfection, extends far beyond the limits of human vision in his ordinary state; like renewed vision, renewed hearing also acts. It was not difficult for the spirit-bearing disciples of Macarius the Great to see the procession of his soul through the air and to hear the words spoken by it in the air and at the entrance to the gates of heaven.
Saint Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria, in his biography Venerable Anthony the Great narrates the following:
“One day he (Antony), at the approach of the ninth hour, having begun to pray before eating food, was suddenly caught up in the Spirit and lifted up by the Angels to a height. The air demons opposed his procession; The angels, arguing with them, demanded an explanation of the reasons for their opposition, because Anthony had no sins. The demons tried to expose the sins he had committed since birth; but the Angels stopped the mouths of the slanderers, telling them that they should not count his sins from birth, already blotted out by the grace of Christ, but let them present, if they have, the sins he committed after the time he dedicated himself to God by entering monasticism. When accusing the demons, they uttered many blatant lies; but since their slander was devoid of evidence, a free path opened for Anthony. He immediately came to his senses and saw that he was standing in the very place where he stood for prayer. Forgetting about food, he spent the whole night in tears and lamentations, thinking about the multitude of human enemies, about the fight against such an army, about the difficulty of the path to heaven through the air and about the words of the Apostle, who said: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but to the beginning” of the power of this air (Eph. 6:12), which, knowing that the powers of the air are only seeking this, are concerned about this with all their efforts, are straining and striving for this in order to deprive us of free passage to heaven, admonishes: “ Take the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to resist in the day of cruelty" (Eph. 6:13), "that the adversary may be put to shame, having nothing to say reproachfully against us" (Titus 2:8).
Recluse Georgy Zadonsky tells an event that is almost contemporary to us: Archimandrite Barsanuphius (of the Zadonsk Monastery) froze for three days. At this time, his soul was in the air ordeals, being tortured for all the sins committed from his youth, but he heard the voice of God: “Prayers for the sake of the Most Holy Theotokos, the Hieromartyr Mokias and the Stratelate Andrew, his sins are forgiven, and time is given for repentance.”
– When I was dying, I saw some Ethiopians standing in front of me; their appearance was very terrible, and my soul was confused. Then I saw two very handsome young men; my soul rushed to them, and immediately, as if flying from the earth, we began to rise to heaven, encountering ordeals on the way 3), holding the soul of every person and each tormenting it about a special sin: one about lies, another about envy, the third about pride; so every sin in the air has its testers, And so I saw in the ark held by the angels all my good deeds, which the angels compared with my evil deeds. So we got past these ordeals. When we, approaching the gates of heaven, came to the ordeal of fornication, fears detained me there and began to show all my fornicating carnal deeds that I had committed from my childhood to death, and the angels leading me said to me: “All bodily sins that God forgave you for what you did while you were in the city, since you repented of them.” But the nasty spirits said to me: “But when you left the city, you committed fornication with your farmer’s wife in the field.” Hearing this, the angels did not find a good deed that could be opposed to that sin and, leaving me, they left. Then the evil spirits took me, began to beat me and then took me down; the earth parted, and I, being led through narrow entrances through cramped and stinking wells, descended to the very depths of the dungeons of hell, where the souls of sinners are imprisoned in eternal darkness, where there is no life for people, but only eternal torment, inconsolable crying and unspeakable gnashing of teeth. There is always a desperate cry: “Woe, woe to us! Alas, alas! And it is impossible to convey all the suffering there, it is impossible to retell all the torments and illnesses that I saw. They groan from the depths of their souls, and no one has mercy on them; they cry, and there is no comforter; they pray, and there is no one who listens to them and delivers them. And I was imprisoned in those dark places full of terrible sorrow, and I cried and sobbed bitterly ... "
- Oh, what glory you have been awarded, Macarius!
The saint answered the demons:
“I’m afraid, because I don’t know anything good that I would do.”
Then those of the demons who were even higher along the path of the following soul of Macarius screamed:
“You really escaped our hands, Macarius!”
But he said:
- No, but we still need to avoid it.
And when the monk was already at the gates of heaven, the demons, with a strong cry, shouted:
- He avoided us, he avoided us.
- Yes! Protected by the power of my Christ, I escaped your wiles.
Such is the life, death and transition to eternal life of our venerable father Macarius.
The great saint of God, viewer of mysteries, Saint Niphon, Bishop of the Cyprus city of Constantius, standing one day in prayer, saw the heavens open and many Angels, some of whom descended to earth, others ascended to the mountain, lifting human souls to heavenly abodes. He began to listen to this spectacle, and behold, two Angels strived for heights, carrying their souls. When they approached the fornication ordeal, the demons came out and said with anger: “This soul is ours! How dare you carry it past us when it is ours?” The Angels answered: “On what basis do you call her yours?” - The demons said: “Until her death, she sinned, being defiled not only by natural, but also by supernatural sins, and she condemned her neighbor, and what’s worse, she died without repentance: what do you say to this?” - The angels answered: “Truly we will not believe either you or your father, Satan, until we ask the guardian angel of this soul.” The guardian angel asked said: “Exactly, this man has sinned a lot; but as soon as he became ill, he began to cry and confess his sins to God. Whether God has forgiven him, He knows. To Him is the power, To Him is glory to the righteous judgment.” Then the Angels, despising the accusation of demons, entered with their souls into the gates of heaven. - Then the Blessed One saw another soul lifted up by the Angels. The demons, running out to them, cried out: “Why are you carrying souls without our knowledge, like this gold-loving, prodigal, quarrelsome, practicing robbery?” The Angels answered: “We probably know that, although she fell into all this, she cried, sighed, confessing and giving alms, and therefore God granted her forgiveness.” The demons said: “If this soul is worthy of God’s mercy, then take the sinners of the whole world; We have no business working here.” The Angels answered them: “All sinners who confess their sins with humility and tears will accept forgiveness by the grace of God; those who die without repentance are judged by God.” Thus, having shamed the demons, they passed on. Again the Holy One saw the ascended soul of a certain God-loving, pure, merciful man, loving to all. The demons stood in the distance and gnashed their teeth at this soul; The angels of God came out to meet her from the gates of heaven and, greeting her, said: “Glory to Thee, Christ God, that Thou didst not deliver her into the hands of her enemies and delivered her from the depths of hell!” - Blessed Niphon also saw that demons were drawing a certain soul to hell. This was the soul of one slave, whom the master tormented with hunger and beatings and who, unable to bear the torment, hanged himself, having been taught by the devil. The guardian angel walked in the distance and wept bitterly; The demons rejoiced. And a command came from God to the weeping Angel to go to Rome, there to take custody of the newborn baby, who was being baptized at that time. - Again the Saint saw a soul carried through the air by Angels, which was taken from them by demons at the fourth ordeal and cast into the abyss. It was the soul of a man given over to fornication, sorcery and robbery, who died suddenly without repentance.
- Well, the Kingdom of Heaven to him, eternal peace.
And as soon as she uttered these words, two Angels appeared next to me; For some reason I recognized my Guardian Angel in one of them, and the other was unknown to me.
Taking me by the arms, the Angels carried me straight through the wall from the room to the street.
... We began to quickly climb up. And as we rose, more and more space opened up to my gaze, and finally it assumed such terrifying proportions that I was seized with fear from the consciousness of my insignificance in front of this endless desert...
I don’t know how long we were going up, when suddenly we heard first some kind of unclear noise, and then, floating out from somewhere, a crowd of some ugly creatures began to quickly approach us, screaming and cackling.
"Demons!" - I realized with extraordinary speed and became numb from some special horror, hitherto unknown to me.
Demons! Oh, how much irony, how much sincere laughter would have been evoked in me just a few days, even hours ago, by someone’s message not only that he saw demons with his own eyes, but that he admits their existence as creatures of a certain kind! As befitted an educated person of the late nineteenth century, by this name I meant bad inclinations, passions in a person, which is why this word itself had the meaning not of a name, but of a term that defined a certain abstract concept. And suddenly this “well-known abstract concept” appeared to me as a living personification!
I still cannot say how and why I then recognized demons in this ugly vision without the slightest bewilderment. What is certain is that such a definition is completely out of the order of things and logic, for if such a spectacle had appeared to me at another time, I would undoubtedly have said that this is some kind of fable in the faces, an ugly whim of fantasy - in a word, anything , but, of course, I would not have called it by the name by which I meant something that cannot be seen. But then this definition poured out with such speed, as if there was no need to think about it, as if I had seen something long ago and well known to me, and since my mental faculties were working at the time, as I said, with some kind of incomprehensible energy, then I realized almost as quickly that the ugly appearance of these creatures was not their real appearance, that it was some kind of vile masquerade, invented, probably, with the aim of frightening me more, and for a moment something like pride stirred in my. I felt ashamed of myself, of man in general, that in order to frighten him, who thinks so much of himself, other creatures resort to such techniques that we practice only in relation to small children.
Having surrounded us on all sides, the demons, with shouting and uproar, demanded that I be given to them; they tried to somehow grab me and tear me out of the hands of the Angels, but, obviously, they did not dare to do this. Among their unimaginable and as disgusting to the ear as they themselves were to the sight, howl and din, I sometimes caught words and whole phrases.
“He is ours, he has renounced God,” they suddenly screamed almost in unison, and at the same time they rushed at us with such impudence that all thought froze for a moment from fear.
"It's a lie! It is not true!" – Having come to my senses, I wanted to shout, but an obliging memory tied my tongue. In some incomprehensible way, I suddenly remembered such a small, insignificant event, which, moreover, belonged to a long-past era of my youth, which, it seems, I could not even remember.
I remembered how, back in the days of my studies, we once gathered at a friend’s place, after talking about our school affairs, we then moved on to talk about various abstract and lofty subjects - conversations that we often had.
“I generally don’t like abstractions,” said one of my comrades, “but this is a complete impossibility.” I can believe in some force of nature, albeit not yet studied by science, that is, I can admit its existence without seeing its obvious, definite manifestations, because it can be very insignificant or merging in its actions with other forces and that is why it is difficult to grasp, but to believe in God as a personal and omnipotent Being, to believe when I do not see clear manifestations of this Personality anywhere, this is absurd. They tell me: believe. But why should I believe when I can equally believe that there is no God? Isn't it true? And maybe He doesn’t exist? – my comrade approached me point-blank.
“Maybe not,” I said.
This phrase was, in the full sense of the word, an “idle verb”: my friend’s stupid speech could not raise any doubts in me about the existence of God, I didn’t even particularly follow the conversation, and now it turned out that this idle verb had not disappeared without a trace in the air, I had to to justify myself, to defend myself from the accusation brought against me, and in this way the Gospel legend was confirmed that, if not by the will of the God who knows the secret hearts of man, then by the malice of the enemy of our salvation we really have to give an answer in every idle word.
This accusation, apparently, was the strongest argument of my destruction for the demons; they seemed to have drawn from it new strength for the boldness of their attacks on me and with a furious roar they spun around us, blocking our further path.
I remembered prayer and began to pray, calling for help those saints whom I knew and whose names came to my mind.
But this did not deter my enemies.
A pitiful ignoramus, a Christian only in name, I almost for the first time remembered the One who is called the Intercessor of the Christian race.
But, probably, my impulse towards Her was ardent, my soul was probably so filled with horror that as soon as I, remembering, uttered Her name, a kind of white fog suddenly appeared around us, which quickly began to cover the ugly host of demons, hiding it from my eyes before it could separate from us. Their roar and cackling could be heard for a long time, but by the way it gradually weakened and became muffled, I could understand that the terrible pursuit was lagging behind us.
The feeling of fear I experienced so captured me that I was not even aware whether we continued our flight during this terrible meeting or whether it stopped us for a while; I realized that we were moving, that we were continuing to rise, only when the endless air space again spread out before me.
Having walked some distance, I saw a bright light above me: it was similar, as it seemed to me, to our solar one, but was much stronger than it. There is probably some kind of Kingdom of Light there.
“Yes, exactly the Kingdom, the complete dominion of light,” I thought, anticipating with some special feeling what I had not yet seen, because in this light there are no shadows. “But how can there be light without shadow?” – my earthly concepts immediately appeared in bewilderment.
And suddenly we quickly entered the sphere of this light, and it literally blinded me. I closed my eyes and raised my hands to my face, but this did not help, since my hands did not provide a shadow. And what did such protection mean here?!
“My God, what is this, what kind of light is this? For me it’s the same darkness. “I can’t look and, as if in the darkness, I don’t see anything,” I prayed, comparing my earthly vision and forgetting or, perhaps, not even realizing that now such a comparison was not suitable, that now I could see in the darkness .
This inability to see, to look, increased for me the fear of the unknown, natural when being in a world unknown to me, and I worriedly thought: “What will happen next? Will we soon pass this sphere of light and is there a limit, an end to it? But something else happened. Majestically, without anger, but imperiously and unshakably, the words came from above:
- Not ready!
And then... then an instant stop in our rapid flight upward - and we quickly began to descend.
... I did not understand the real meaning of the words that applied to me, that is, I did not understand that I had to return to earth and live again the same way I lived before; I thought that I was being carried to some other country, and a feeling of timid protest stirred in me when the outlines of the city first appeared vaguely in front of me, as in the morning fog, and then the familiar streets clearly appeared.
Here is the hospital building that I remember. Just as before, through the walls of the building and closed doors I was carried into some room completely unknown to me; in this room there were several tables painted with dark paint in a row, and on one of them, covered with something white, I saw myself lying, or rather, my dead, numb body.
Not far from my table, some gray-haired old man in a brown jacket, moving a bent wax candle along the lines of large print, was reading the Psalter, and on the other side, on a black bench standing along the wall, sat, apparently already notified of my death and having managed to arrive, my sister and next to her, bending down and quietly saying something to her, is her husband.
-Have you heard God's definition? - Leading me to the table, my hitherto silent Guardian Angel turned to me and, then pointing his hand at my dead body, said:
- Come in and get ready.
And for this both Angels became invisible to me......
He heard how all his sins, starting from his youth, which he either did not confess, or forgot, or did not recognize as sins, cry out against him, each with their own voice, and with sorrow they accuse him... Everything that he did for everything days of his life and refused to confess, and much that he did not consider to be a sin - they all now shouted terrible words against him. And in the same way, the evil spirits, enumerating his vices, accusing and bringing evidence, even naming the time and place, brought evidence of his evil deeds... And so, having piled up and counted all his sins, these ancient enemies declared him guilty and undeniably susceptible their power.
“On the other hand,” he said, “the small, pitiful virtues that I had unworthily and imperfectly spoke in my defense... And these Angelic spirits in their boundless love protected and supported me, and the slightly exaggerated virtues seemed to me beautiful and far greater than I could ever demonstrate in my own strength."
When the hour of my death came, I suddenly saw many evil spirits who appeared to me in the form of Ethiopians [Ethiopians (after the name of the people inhabiting the region of Africa southeast of Egypt, distinguished by their black skin color), Christian writers often call the dark spirits of evil] and, standing at my bedside, they had outrageous conversations and looked at me brutally... Their eyes were bloodshot and seemed blacker than tar. The evil spirits did all sorts of things to frighten me: they were going to kidnap me and take it for themselves, and they brought large books in which all my sins were written down that I had committed since the day of my youth; We looked through these books, as if expecting the arrival of some judge any minute. Seeing all this, I was worried with fear. I was completely exhausted from trembling and horror and in such suffering I looked here and there, wanting to see someone and ask them to drive away these disorderly Ethiopians, but, alas, there was no one who would help me get rid of them.
Being in such a painful state, I suddenly saw two Angels in the form of bright young men, very handsome, dressed in golden clothes; their hair was like snow. They approached my bed and stood on the right side. There were no limits to my joy when I saw them. The evil spirits, seeing the Angels appear, immediately moved away with fear. Then one of the Angels turned to them with anger and asked: “Why do you, dark enemies of the human race, confuse and torment the dying soul? Don’t be happy, there’s nothing of yours here.” After the Angel said this, the shameless spirits began to list everything that I had done from my youth, whether in word, deed, or thought - they told all this to the Angels and at the same time sarcastically asked them: “What? Isn’t there nothing?.. Didn’t she do all this?..” And they added much, much more of their own, wanting to slander me as much as possible.
Finally, death came. She poured something into the cup, but I don’t know what, brought it to me to drink and then, taking a knife, cut off my head. Oh, my child, how bitter, bitter I felt then! And at that moment, death tore out my soul, which quickly separated from the body, just as a bird quickly jumps away from the hand of a catcher if he sets it free.
Then the luminous Angels took me into their arms, and we began to ascend to heaven. Looking back, I saw my body lying motionless, soulless and insensitive, as clothes usually lie when someone, having undressed, throws it and then, standing in front of it, looks at it. When the holy Angels were carrying me, the evil spirits came and said: “We have many of her sins: answer us for them.” In response to this, the Holy Angels presented all the good deeds that I had ever done: when I gave bread to the poor, or gave something to drink to the thirsty, or visited the sick or a prisoner in prison, or when I went to church with zeal, or gave peace to a stranger in the house. in her own life, or when she poured oil into a lamp in the church, or gave incense to the temple of God, or when she reconciled one of the warring parties, or shed tears in prayer, or when she endured troubles with patience, or washed the feet of strangers, or confirmed people in the faith those of little faith, or warned someone against sin, or grieved over other people’s misfortunes and misfortunes, or suffered for others, or hurried to someone for a good deed, or made many bows; or when I fasted in order to conquer evil in myself and subjugate the flesh to the spirit, or fasted on Lent, and on the Nativity of Christ, and on the Feast of the Holy Apostles, and on the Dormition of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, and on every Wednesday and Friday; or when I tried not to see what was useless, not to hear idle talk, slander and lies; Having collected all this, they contrasted these good deeds with my sins, and the latter were redeemed by the former.
Opening one vessel after another, the young men poured aromas on me, I was filled with a spiritual fragrance and felt that I had changed and became very bright. The monk said to the holy angels: “My Lords! When you have completed everything necessary for her, then bring her to the abode prepared for me by the Lord and leave her there.” Having said this, he walked away.
The Holy Angels took me from the earth and headed up to heaven, as if ascending through the air. And on the way we suddenly met the first ordeal, which is called the ordeal idle talk and foul language. The torturers appeared and demanded to answer everything that I had ever said badly about anyone; They blamed me for the bad songs I sang, for indecent laughter and ridicule. All this was forgotten by me, since a lot of time has passed since then. But the Angels protected me from the torturers, and we moved on.
Rising higher to the sky, we reached the ordeal the second - the ordeal of lies. The evil spirits who were there were very vile, disgusting and ferocious. When they saw us, they came out to meet us and began to slander me, pointing out the time and place when and where I told lies about whom, even pointing out those persons about whom I told lies. The angels, for their part, protected me and gave me to the evil torturers from the reliquary of St. Basil; and we passed them without trouble.
We have reached third ordeal- ordeal condemnation and slander. There were many evil spirits here. One of them, an older one, came up and started talking about when and with what bad words I had slandered someone throughout my life. It is true that they showed many things falsely, but in any case it was amazing to me how they could remember everything that really happened with such detail and accuracy that I myself had forgotten. All this tormented and tormented me. The holy angels, for their part, told about my good deeds, separating me from the reliquary given by Saint Basil. We have passed this trouble too.
Further on the way we met an ordeal fourth - binge eating and drunkenness. The servants of this ordeal stood like ravenous wolves, ready to devour anyone who came to them. They attacked me like dogs, expressing everything that I had done in my youth regarding gluttony, they remembered when I ate in the morning without praying to God, they also pointed out that I ate modest meals on fasting days, that I ate before lunch and during lunch in excess, that she ate without measure both before dinner and during dinner; in all this they accused me, trying to snatch me from the hands of the Angels. Finally, one of them asked me: “Didn’t you promise at holy baptism to the Lord your God to renounce Satan and all his works and everything that belongs to Satan? Having made such a vow, how could you do what you did?” They even put up accounts of the cups that I had drunk throughout my life, saying to me: “Didn’t you drink so many cups on such and such a day, and on such and such a man drank with you, and on such and such a woman? Weren’t you drunk, drinking too much and drinking so much?..” In a word, these hated enemies of the human race slandered me a lot, trying to kidnap me from the hands of the Angels. Then I said that all this really happened and that I remember all this... The angels, having given a part from the reliquary of St. Basil, atoned for my sins of gluttony, and we moved on.
One of the Angels told me: “You see, Theodora, what the soul of the deceased has to experience when it goes through all these ordeals and meets these evil spirits, these princes of darkness.” I answered: “Yes, I saw it and was terribly scared; I wonder if people on earth know what awaits them here and what they will encounter after their death?” “Yes, they know,” said the Angel, “but the pleasures and delights of life affect them so strongly, absorb their attention so much that they involuntarily forget about what awaits them beyond the grave. Good for those who remember the Holy Scriptures and do alms, or perform any other good deeds, which can subsequently redeem them from the eternal torment of hell. Those people who live carelessly, as if immortal, thinking only about the blessings of the womb and about pride, if death suddenly overtakes them, it will completely destroy them, since they will not have any good deeds to defend themselves. The souls of those people, the dark princes of these ordeals, having severely tormented them, will be taken to the dark places of hell and will keep them there until the coming of Christ - and you, Theodora, would have suffered like this if you had not received the gifts from the saint of God Vasily, who saved you here from everyone these troubles."
Having such a conversation, we reached fifth ordeal - the ordeal of laziness, where sinners are tortured for all the days and hours spent in idleness. Parasites who lived on the labors of others, but did not want to work themselves, and mercenaries who took wages, but did not fulfill the duties they had assumed, are also detained here. Those who are careless about glorifying God are also tormented, and are lazy on holidays and Sundays to go to church for morning services, the Divine Liturgy and other sacred services. Here, despondency and negligence of both worldly and spiritual people are experienced in general, and everyone’s negligence about their soul is examined, and many from there are relegated to the abyss. And I was tested there a lot, and it would have been impossible for me to be freed from debts if the holy Angels had not made up for my shortcomings with the gifts of St. Basil.
We came to the ordeal sixth - theft. Here, too, they gave a little to the evil spirits and passed freely.
ordeal seventh, love of money and stinginess, we passed without detention, because, by the grace of God, I never in my life cared about many acquisitions and was not a lover of money, being content with what God gave; and she was not stingy, but what she had, she diligently distributed to those in need.
We entered the ordeal eighth, covetousness. The representatives of this ordeal, tormenting the sins of bribery and flattery, had nothing against me and therefore gnashed their teeth with anger when we comfortably left them.
This is the ordeal ninth - untruths and vanity. I was innocent of them, and soon we left from there.
We have reached the tenth ordeal, the ordeal of envy. By the grace of Christ, here too the evil spirits had nothing against me: neither in their memory nor in their books did they find anything to condemn me. And we happily moved on.
Met eleventh ordeal, where the sins of pride are tested, but we went through it completely freely, since I turned out to be innocent of this sin.
Ascending further to the sky, we met an ordeal twelfth - the ordeal of anger. Happy is the man who, while living, did not experience anger. And so the oldest of the evil spirits, who was here and sat on the throne, filled with rage and pride, angrily ordered his servants who were here to torment and torture me. The latter, licking their lips like dogs, began to inform on me. They revealed not only what words I really once uttered with rage and anger, or what words I used to harm someone, but they also talked about how I once looked at my children with anger, and another time I punished them too severely . They presented everything very vividly, even indicating the time when this or that sin was committed by me, and those people on whom I once poured out my anger, they even repeated my original words that I spoke then, and said who was present at this. The Angels responded to all this by giving from the ark, and we went higher.
And we met an ordeal thirteenth - rancor. Like robbers, evil spirits jumped up to us and, testing me, wanted to find something written in their charters, but since, through the prayer of St. Basil, they found nothing, they began to cry... I was sinful in many ways, but love she cared for everyone, both great and small, never offended anyone, never remembered evil, never took revenge on others for evil... And we moved on without stopping.
I dared to ask one of the Angels who accompanied me: “I beg you, tell me, how do these evil spirits that we met in the ordeals know who and what did bad things in life?” The holy angel answered: “Every Christian at holy baptism receives a Guardian Angel, who invisibly protects him from everything bad and instructs him in everything good and records all the good deeds performed by this person... On the other hand, the evil angel watches him throughout his life for the evil deeds of man and writes them down in his book; he writes down all the sins in which, as you have seen, people are tested, going through ordeals and heading to heaven. These sins can prevent a soul from entering heaven and cast it straight into the abyss, in which the evil spirits themselves live. There these souls will live until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, if they do not have good deeds behind them that could snatch them from the hands of the devil. People who believe in the Holy Trinity, who partake as often as possible of the holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ the Savior, have direct access to heaven, without any obstacles, and the holy Angels are their protectors, and the holy saints of God pray for the salvation of the souls of such righteously lived people. Nobody cares about the wicked and evil heretics, who do nothing useful in their lives, who live only in unbelief and heresy, and the Angels cannot say anything in their defense.
We came to the ordeal fourteenth - robbery. It tests all those who have pushed someone with anger, or hit someone on the cheeks, shoulders or neck with a rod, or a stick, or some other weapon. The Holy Angels, giving me a little from the reliquary, led me through this ordeal without harm.
We suddenly found ourselves in fifteenth ordeal - sorcery, charm, poisoning with herbs, calling demons. Here were evil spirits, serpentine in appearance, for whom the only purpose of existence was to lead people into temptations and debauchery. Not one of them could say a word against me, since I was innocent of these sins. By the grace of Christ, we soon passed this ordeal.
After this, I asked the Angels accompanying me: “Is it possible for every sin that a person commits in life to be tortured in these ordeals, after death, or, perhaps, is it possible to atone for his sin in life in order to be cleansed of it here too? no longer suffer for him. I’m just in awe of how detailed everything goes.” The angels answered me that not everyone is tested like this in ordeals, but only those like me, who did not confess sincerely before death. If I had confessed to my spiritual father without any shame or fear everything sinful and if I had received forgiveness from my spiritual father, then I would have gone through all these ordeals without hindrance and I would not have had to be tortured for a single sin. But since I did not want to sincerely confess my sins to my spiritual father, here they torture me for this.
Of course, I was helped a lot by the fact that throughout my entire life I wanted and tried to avoid sin. Anyone who diligently strives for repentance always receives forgiveness from God, and through this a free transition from this life to the blissful life after death. The evil spirits who are in ordeals along with their scriptures, having opened them, do not find anything written, for the Holy Spirit makes everything written invisible. And they see this, and know that everything written down by them has been blotted out thanks to confession, and then they grieve greatly. If the person is still alive, then they try to write some other sins in this place again. Great, truly, is the salvation of a person in confession!.. It saves him from many troubles and misfortunes, makes it possible to go through all the ordeals without hindrance and get closer to God. Others do not confess in the hope that there will still be time for salvation and forgiveness of sins; others are simply ashamed to express their sins to their confessor in confession - these are the people who will be tested strictly in the ordeals. There are also those who are ashamed to express everything to one spiritual father, but choose several, and reveal some sins to one confessor, others to another, and so on; for such a confession they will be punished and will endure a lot, going through ordeals.
So we walked and talked; imperceptibly the ordeal appeared before us the sixteenth is the ordeal of fornication. The torturers of this ordeal jumped up and, looking at us, were amazed that we had reached this ordeal without hindrance, and for some time they stood as if in oblivion. Then they began to torture me, and they not only told the truth, but also gave a lot of false testimony, citing names and places in support; We stayed here for quite a long time.
Here seventeenth ordeal - adultery. The servants of this ordeal quickly jumped up to me and began to explain my sins: how before, when I had not yet served with our holy father Basil, I had a spouse, whom my mistress gave me, and lived with him, and once sinned with others; and they slandered me a lot. The Holy Angels protected me here too, and we moved on.
We then showed up at the eighteenth ordeal - the ordeal of the sins of Sodom, where all unnatural prodigal sins are tortured, and in general all the most vile, secretly committed deeds, about which, according to the word of the Apostle, “it is shameful to speak” (Eph. 5:12). I was not guilty of the sins of this ordeal, and we soon passed it.
While we were rising higher, the holy Angels said to me: “You saw the terrible and disgusting fornication ordeals; know that a rare soul passes them freely: the whole world is in the evil of temptations and defilements, almost all people are voluptuous; “The thoughts of the human heart are evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21), there are few who mortify carnal lusts and few who would freely pass by these ordeals. Most of them die when they get here. The authorities of the prodigal ordeals boast that they alone, more than all other ordeals, replenish the fiery kinship in hell. Thank God, Theodora, that you passed these prodigal torturers through the prayers of your father, St. Basil. You won't see fear anymore."
After that we came to nineteenth ordeal- which is called "idolatry and all kinds of heresies". Here I was not tested in anything, and we soon passed it.
Then we encountered the twentieth ordeal, which is called ordeal of unmercifulness and hardness of heart. In this ordeal all the unmerciful, cruel, harsh and hateful are recorded. When someone does not follow the commandments of God and is not merciful, then the soul of such a person, having come to this ordeal, will be subjected to various tortures and thrown into hell, and there it will be locked up until the general Resurrection. God will not have mercy on such a soul, since she did not give a piece of bread to the poor, did not comfort the beggar, did not visit the sick, did not have mercy on the weak and offended, if not in deed, then at least in a word of comfort, and did not grieve with him in his grief , but, on the contrary, did the opposite.
When we came here, the prince of this ordeal seemed to me very, very cruel, stern and even sad, as if from a long illness. He cried and sobbed; it seemed that he was breathing the fire of unmercifulness. His servants flew up to me like bees and began to test me, but, not finding anything, they walked away; We, cheerful and joyful, moved on.
And so we approached the gates of heaven and entered them, rejoicing that we had successfully passed the bitter trials of the ordeal....
In this fallen world, the habitat of demons, the place where the souls of the newly departed meet them, is the air. Bishop Ignatius further describes this kingdom, which must be clearly understood in order to fully understand modern “posthumous” experiences.
“The Word of God and the Spirit who assists the word reveal to us through their chosen vessels that the space between heaven and earth, the entire azure abyss of the airs visible to us, the heavenly regions, serves as a dwelling for the fallen angels cast out of heaven...’’
"The Holy Apostle Paul calls the fallen angels the spirits of wickedness in high places (Eph. VI, 12), and their head the prince of the power of the air (Eph. II, 2). The fallen angels are scattered in multitudes throughout the transparent abyss that we see above us ". They do not cease to disturb all human societies and each person individually; there is no atrocity, there is no crime in which they were not the instigators and participants; they incline and teach a person to sin by all possible means. Your adversary is the devil," says the holy Apostle Peter, "like a lion walks roaring, looking for someone to devour (1 Peter V, 8) both during our earthly life and after the separation of the soul from the body. When the soul of a Christian, leaving its earthly temple, begins to strive through the air space to the mountainous fatherland, demons stop it, try find in her an affinity with themselves, their sinfulness, their fall and bring her down to hell, prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew XXV, 41). So they act according to the right acquired by them "(Bishop Ignatius. Collected works, t 3, pp. 132-133).
After the fall of Adam, Bishop Ignatius continues, when paradise was closed to man and a Cherub with a fiery sword was placed to guard it (Gen. III, 24), the head of the fallen angels - Satan - together with the hordes of spirits subordinate to him, “became on the way from earth to heaven, and from that time until the saving suffering and life-giving death of Christ, he did not let a single human soul separated from the body pass along that path. The gates of heaven were closed for man forever. Both the righteous and sinners descended into hell.
Eternal gates and impassable paths were opened only before our Lord Jesus Christ” (pp. 134-135). After our redemption by Jesus Christ, “all who have clearly rejected the Redeemer are now the property of Satan; their souls, after separation from their bodies, descend straight to hell. But even Christians who deviate towards sin are not worthy of immediate relocation from earthly life to blissful eternity. Justice itself demands, so that these deviations to sin of the Christian soul, these betrayals of the Redeemer are weighed and evaluated. Judgment and analysis are necessary to determine what prevails in it - eternal life or eternal death. And every Christian soul awaits, upon its departure from the body, the impartial judgment of God, as said the holy Apostle Paul: man lies to die alone, and then comes the judgment (Heb. IX, 27).
To torture souls passing through the airspace, the dark authorities have installed separate courts and guards in remarkable order. Along the layers of heaven, from the earth to the sky itself, there are guard regiments of fallen spirits. Each department is in charge of a special type of sin and torments the soul in it when the soul reaches this department. The aerial demonic guards and judgment seats are called ordeals in the patristic writings, and the spirits serving in them are called tax collectors.
How to understand ordeals
Perhaps no aspect of Orthodox eschatology has been more misunderstood than the aerial ordeals. Many graduates of contemporary modernist Orthodox seminaries tend to reject this phenomenon altogether as some kind of “late addition” to Orthodox teaching or as a “fictional” kingdom with no basis in Holy Scripture, or patristic texts, or spiritual reality. These students are victims of a rationalist education that lacks a nuanced understanding of both the different levels of reality often described in Orthodox texts and the different levels of meaning often found in biblical and patristic texts. The modern rationalistic overemphasis on the “literal” meaning of texts and the “realistic” or down-to-earth understanding of the events described in the Holy Scriptures and the lives of the saints obscures or even completely obscures the spiritual meaning and spiritual experience that often serve as the main Orthodox sources. Therefore, Bishop Ignatius, who, on the one hand, was a sophisticated modern intellectual, and on the other, a true and simple son of the Church, can serve as a good mediator with the help of which Orthodox intellectuals could find ways to return to the true Orthodox tradition.
Before further expounding the teaching of Bishop Ignatius on aerial ordeals, let us mention the warnings of two Orthodox thinkers - one modern and one ancient - to those who begin to study the otherworldly reality.
In the 19th century, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, speaking about the state of the soul after death, wrote: “It should, however, be noted that, just as in general in the depiction of objects of the spiritual world for us, clothed in flesh, features that are more or less sensual, humanoid are inevitable - so , in particular, they are inevitably admitted in the detailed teaching about the ordeals that the human soul goes through upon separation from the body. And therefore we must firmly remember the instruction that the Angel gave to the Monk Macarius of Alexandria, as soon as he began to talk about the ordeals: “Take earthly things here for the most faint image of heavenly ones''. It is necessary to imagine the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but as much as is possible for us in the spiritual sense, and not become attached to particulars, which in different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, despite the unity of the basic thought about the ordeals, are presented as different” (Met. Macarius of Moscow, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, St. Petersburg, 1883, vol. 2, p. 538).
Some examples of such details, which should not be interpreted rudely and sensually, are given by St. Gregory Dvoeslov in the fourth book of his “Interviews,” which, as we have already seen, are specifically devoted to the issue of life after death.
Thus, describing the posthumous vision of a certain Reperat, who saw a sinful priest standing on top of a huge fire, St. Gregory writes: “Reperat saw the preparation of fires not because wood was burning in hell; but for the most convenient story to the living, he saw in the burning of sinners that which usually maintains the material fire of the living, so that they, hearing about what is known, would learn to fear what they not yet known'' (IV, 31, p. 314).
And also, having described how one person was sent back after death because of a “mistake” - in fact, someone else, bearing the same name, was recalled from life (this also happened in modern “posthumous” experiments), St. Gregory adds: "When this happens, careful consideration will show that it was not an error, but a warning. In His infinite mercy, the good God allows some souls to return to their bodies soon after death, so that by a vision of hell they will finally be taught the fear of eternal punishment, which words alone could not make them believe” (IV, 37).
And when one person in a posthumous vision was shown the golden dwellings of paradise, St. Gregory notes: “Of course, no one with common sense will understand these words literally... Since generous alms are rewarded with eternal glory, it seems quite possible to build an eternal dwelling of gold” (IV, 37).
Later we will dwell in more detail on the difference between visions of another world and real cases of leaving the body there (the experience of the ordeals and many of the modern “posthumous” experiences clearly belong to the latter category); but for now it is enough for us to be aware that we must approach all collisions with the other world carefully and soberly. No one familiar with Orthodox teaching will say that ordeals are not “real”, that in fact the soul does not go through them after death. But we must keep in mind that this does not take place in our crude material world, that although there time and space exist, they are fundamentally different from our earthly concepts, and that in our earthly language stories can never convey otherworldly reality. Anyone well acquainted with Orthodox literature will usually be clear how to distinguish the spiritual reality described there from transcendent ones details which may sometimes be expressed in symbolic or figurative language. Thus, of course, there are no visible "houses" or "booths" in the air where "taxes" are collected, and where "scrolls" or writing instruments are mentioned whereby sins are recorded , or "scales" on which virtues are weighed, or "gold" with which "debts" are paid - in all these cases we can correctly understand these images as figurative or explanatory means used to express the spiritual reality which the soul encounters in this moment. Whether the soul then really sees these images, thanks to the constant habit of seeing spiritual reality in bodily form, or whether later it can remember the experience only through such images, or simply cannot express the experience in any other way - this is a secondary question, which, apparently, for the holy fathers and the writers of the lives of saints, where such incidents are narrated, does not seem significant.
Another thing is important - that there is torture by demons, who appear in a terrible, inhuman form, accuse the newly deceased of sins and literally try to grab his subtle body, which the Angels hold tightly; all this happens in the air above us and can be seen by those whose eyes are open to spiritual reality.
Now let us return to Bishop Ignatius’ presentation of the Orthodox teaching on aerial ordeals.
Patristic testimony on aerial ordeals
“The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church. There is no doubt that the holy Apostle Paul speaks about them when he proclaims that Christians must contend with the spirits of evil in high places (Eph. VI, 12). We find this teaching in the most ancient church tradition and in church prayers.” (p. 138).
Bishop Ignatius quotes many saints. fathers who teach about ordeals. Here we quote some of them.
St. Athanasius the Great in his Life of St. Anthony the Great describes how once St. Anthony "at the onset of the ninth hour, having begun to pray before eating food, he was suddenly caught up in the Spirit and taken up by the Angels to a height. The air demons opposed his procession; the Angels, arguing with them, demanded an explanation of the reasons for their opposition, because Anthony had no sins. Demons tried to expose the sins he committed from birth; but the Angels blocked the mouths of the slanderers, telling them that they should not count his sins from birth, already blotted out by the grace of Christ, but let them present, if they have, the sins he committed after the time when By entering monasticism, he dedicated himself to God. When accusing the demons, they uttered many blatant lies; but since their slander was devoid of evidence, a free path opened for Anthony. He immediately came to his senses and saw that he was standing in the very place where he stood for prayers. Forgetting about food, he spent the whole night in tears and lamentations, thinking about the multitude of human enemies, about the fight against such an army, about the difficulties of the path to heaven through the air and about the words of the Apostle, who said: our struggle is not for blood and flesh, but to the principalities and to the powers of the air (Eph. VI, 12; Eph. II, 2), who, knowing that the authorities of the air are just looking for this, are concerned about this with all their effort, are straining and striving for this in order to deprive us of free passage to heaven, exhorts: accept all the weapons of God, so that you will be able to resist on the day They are cruel, so that the enemy will be put to shame, having nothing to say reproachfully about us (Eph. VI, 13; Tit. II, 8; p. 138).
St. John Chrysostom, describing the hour of death, teaches: “Then we need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, great intercession from the Angels during the procession through the air. If, traveling to a foreign country or a foreign city, we need a guide, then how much more do we need guides and assistants to guide us past the invisible elders and authorities of the world rulers of this air, called persecutors, publicans, and tax collectors!'' (A word about patience and thanksgiving and that we do not cry inconsolably for the dead, which in the Orthodox Church is supposed to be read on the seventh Saturday after Easter and at the burial of the deceased).
St. Macarius the Great writes: “Hearing that under the heavens there are rivers of serpents, mouths of lions, dark powers, a burning fire that brings all members into confusion, don’t you know that if you do not receive the pledge of the Holy Spirit, when they depart from the body they will thy soul they will understand and prevent you from going to heaven'' (Conversation 16, chapter 13).
St. Isaiah the Hermit, one of the authors of the Philokalia (IV century), teaches that Christians must “have death before their eyes every day and be concerned about how to accomplish the exodus from the body and how to pass by the powers of darkness that are about to meet us in the air "(Homily 1, 4). When the soul leaves the body, Angels accompany it; dark forces come out to meet it, wanting to hold it and torturing it to see if they find something of their own in it" (Homily 17).
And again, Saint Hesychius, the presbyter of Jerusalem (5th century), teaches: “The hour of death will come upon us, it will come, and it will be impossible to avoid it. Oh, if only the prince of peace and air, who should then meet us, would find our iniquity insignificant and insignificant and not could have denounced us correctly!" (A Word on Sobriety, 161, Philokalia, vol. 2).
St. Gregory the Dvoeslov (+604) writes in his Discourses on the Gospel: “We must think thoroughly about how terrible the hour of death will be for us, what horror of the soul then, what remembrance of all evils, what oblivion of past happiness, what fear and what apprehension Judges. Then the evil spirits in the departing soul look for its deeds; then they visualize those sins to which they disposed it, in order to entice their accomplice to torment. But why are we talking only about the sinful soul, when they come even to the chosen dying and do they find their own in them, if they have time to do anything? Among people there was only One, Who, before His suffering, fearlessly said: To whom I speak not much with you. For the prince of this world is coming, and in Me he will have nothing (John XIV, 30) (Words on the Gospels, 39, on Luke XIX, 12-47: Bishop Ignatius, vol. 3, p. 278).
St. Ephraim the Syrian (+373) describes the hour of death and judgment in the ordeal: “When terrible armies come, when the divine takers command the soul to move from the body, when, dragging us by force, they take us to the inevitable judgment seat, then, seeing them, the poor man ... everything comes into vibration, as if from an earthquake, everything trembles ... the divine takers, having revealed the soul, ascend through the air, where the rulers and powers and rulers of the world of opposing forces stand. These are our evil accusers, terrible tax collectors, inventory clerks, tax collectors; they meet on the way, describe and calculate the sins and handwritings of this person, the sins of youth and old age, voluntary and involuntary, committed by deed, word, thought... There is great fear there, great trembling of the poor soul, indescribable need that he then suffers from the countless multitude of darkness surrounding her enemies, slandering her, in order to prevent her from ascending to heaven, settling in the light of the living, entering the land of life. But the holy Angels, having taken the soul, take her away "(St. Ephraim the Syrian. Collected works. M., 1882 , vol. 3, pp. 383-385).
The divine services of the Orthodox Church also contain numerous references to ordeals. Thus, in "Octoechos", the work of St. John of Damascus (8th century), we read: “At the hour, O Virgin, of the end of my end the hands of demons will snatch me up, and judgment and debate, and terrible trials, and bitter ordeals, and the cruel prince, the Mother of God, and eternal condemnation” (Tone 4, Friday, troparion of the 8th song of the canon at Matins).
Or: “Whenever my soul desires to be separated from life through carnal union, then stand before me, O Lady, and destroy the ethereal enemies’ councils, and break the jaws of those who seek to devour me mercilessly: for let the standing princes of darkness in the air, O Bride of God, pass unchallenged” (voice 2 , Saturday Matins, stichera on stichera). Bishop Ignatius gives seventeen similar examples from liturgical books, but this list, of course, is incomplete.
The most profound presentation of the doctrine of aerial ordeals among the early Church Fathers can be found in the “Sermon on the Exodus of the Soul” by St. Cyril of Alexandria (+444), which was always included in editions of the Slavic Followed Psalter, that is, the Psalter adapted for use in worship. Among other things, St. Cyril says in this “Word”: “The other fear and trembling that the soul desires on this day is to see terrible and wondrous and cruel and merciless and cold-free demons, like the gloomy murines that are coming! Just as vision itself is the only cruelest torment, Seeing that their soul is confused, worried, ill, restless and hides, resorting to God's Angels, the soul is supported by the holy Angels, passing through the air, and is exalted, finds ordeals, guarding the sunrise, and holding, and rebuking the ascending souls: each time their ordeals every passion of the soul brings sins, and every sin has its own publicans and torturers.”
Many other St. fathers both before and after St. Kirill talk about ordeals or mention them. Having quoted many of them, the above-mentioned historian of church dogma concludes: “Such continuous, ever-present and widespread use in the Church of the doctrine of ordeals, especially among the teachers of the fourth century, indisputably testifies that it was transmitted to them from the teachers of previous centuries and is based on the apostolic tradition.” (Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, p. 535).
Ordeals in the Lives of the Saints
Orthodox lives of saints contain numerous and sometimes very vivid stories about how the soul goes through ordeals after death. The most detailed description can be found in the Life of St. Basil the New (March 26), which contains the story of Blessed Theodora to the saint’s disciple, Gregory, about how she went through ordeals. This story mentions twenty special ordeals and tells what sins are tested for them. Bishop Ignatius sets out this story at some length (vol. 3, pp. 151-158). It does not contain anything significant that cannot be found in other Orthodox sources about the ordeals, so we will omit it here in order to quote some of these other sources, which, although less detailed, follow the same outline of events.
The story of the warrior Taxiot (“Lives of the Saints,” March 28) tells, for example, that he returned to life after spending six hours in the grave, and said the following: “When I was dying, I saw some Ethiopians standing in front of me; their appearance was very terrible, and my soul was confused. Then I saw two young men, very beautiful; my soul rushed to them immediately, as if flying from the earth. We began to rise to heaven, encountering on the way the ordeals that hold the soul of every person. Each tortured it about a special sin: one about lies, another about envy, the third about pride; so every sin in the air has its testers. And so I saw in the ark held by the Angels, all my good deeds, which the Angels compared with my evil deeds. So we passed these ordeals. When we, approaching the gates of heaven, came to the ordeal of fornication, fears kept me there and began to show all my fornicating carnal deeds that I had committed from my childhood to death, and the Angels leading me said to me: “Everything God forgave you the bodily sins that you committed while in the city, since you repented of them.” But the nasty spirits said to me: “But when you left the city, you committed fornication with your farmer’s wife in the field.” Hearing this, the Angels did not find a good deed that could be opposed to that sin, and leaving me, they left. Then the evil spirits took me, began to beat me and then took me down; the earth parted, and I, being led through narrow entrances through dark and stinking wells, descended to the very depths of the dungeons of hell.”
Bishop Ignatius also cites other cases of ordeals in the lives of St. Great Martyr Eustratius (IV century, December 13), St. Niphon from Constantia of Cyprus, who saw many souls ascending through ordeals (IV century, December 23), St. Simeon Christ for the sake of the Fool of Emesa (IV century, July 21), St. John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria (VII century, Prologue for December 19), St. Macarius the Great (January 19).
Bishop Ignatius was not familiar with the numerous early Orthodox Western sources, which were never translated into Greek or Russian and which are so replete with descriptions of ordeals. The name “ordeal” seems to be limited to Eastern sources, but the reality described in Western sources is identical.
For example, St. Columba, the founder of the island monastery of Iona in Scotland (+ 597), many times during his life saw demons fighting in the air for the souls of the dead. St. Adamnan (+ 704) talks about this in the life of the saint he wrote. Here is one of the cases:
One day St. Columba called his monks and told them: “Let us help with prayer the monks of Abbot Comgel, who are drowning at this hour in the Lake of Veal, for at this moment they are fighting in the air against the forces of evil, trying to capture the soul of a stranger who is drowning with them.” Then, after prayer, he said: “Give thanks to Christ, for now the holy Angels have met these holy souls, freed that stranger, and saved him in triumph from the warring demons.”
St. Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon apostle of the Germans (8th century), conveys in one of his letters a story heard at Wenlock from the lips of a monk who died and a few hours later returned to life. When he left his body, “he was picked up by Angels of such pure beauty that he could not look at them...” “They carried me,” he said, “high into the air.”... Then he said that during that time that he was outside his body, so many souls left their bodies and crowded into the place where he was that it seemed to him that there were more of them than the entire population of the earth. He also said that there was a crowd of evil spirits and a glorious choir of high angels. And he said that the evil spirits and the holy angels had a fierce dispute over the souls that had left their bodies: the demons accused them and aggravated the burden of their sins, and the Angels lightened this burden and brought extenuating circumstances.
He heard how all his sins, starting from his youth, which he either did not confess, or forgot, or did not recognize as sins, cry out against him, each with their own voice, and with sorrow they accuse him... Everything that he did for everything days of his life and refused to confess, and many things that he did not consider to be sins - they all now shouted terrible words against him. And in the same way, the evil spirits, enumerating his vices, accusing and bringing evidence, even naming the time and place, brought evidence of his evil deeds... And so, having piled up and counted all his sins, these ancient enemies declared him guilty and undeniably susceptible their power.
“On the other hand,” he said, “the small, pitiful virtues that I had unworthily and imperfectly spoke in my defense... And these Angelic spirits in their boundless love protected and supported me, and the slightly exaggerated virtues seemed to me beautiful and far greater than I could ever demonstrate in my own strength."
Modern cases of ordeal
In the book “Incredible for many, but a true incident,” you can get acquainted with the reaction of a typical “educated” person of our time to meeting with ordeals during his 36-hour clinical death. “Taking me by the arms, the Angels carried me straight through the wall from the chamber to the street. It was already getting dark, a large, quiet snow was falling. I saw it, but I did not feel the cold or any change in general between the room temperature and the outside temperature. Obviously, such things were lost for my changed body its meaning. We began to quickly rise upward. And as we rose, more and more space opened up to my gaze, and finally it assumed such terrifying proportions that I was seized with fear from the consciousness of my insignificance in front of this endless desert. .. The idea of time went out in my mind, and I don’t know how long we were still climbing up, when suddenly some kind of unclear noise was heard, and then, floating out from somewhere, a crowd of some people began to quickly approach us, screaming and cackling. then ugly creatures.
“Demons!” - I realized with extraordinary speed and became numb from some special, hitherto unknown horror. Demons! Oh, how much irony, how much sincere laughter would have been caused in me just a few days ago by someone’s message not only about that he saw demons with his own eyes, but that he admits their existence as creatures of a certain kind! As befitted an “educated” person of the late 19th century, by this name I meant bad inclinations, passions in man, which is why this word itself had I have the meaning not of a name, but of a term that defines a well-known concept. And suddenly this “known definite concept” appeared to me as a living personification!..
Having surrounded us on all sides, the demons, with shouting and uproar, demanded that I be given to them; they tried to somehow grab me and tear me out of the hands of the Angels, but, obviously, they did not dare to do this. Among their unimaginable and as disgusting to the ear as they themselves were to the sight, howl and din, I sometimes caught words and whole phrases.
“He is ours, he has renounced God,” they suddenly screamed almost in unison, and at the same time they rushed at us with such impudence that all thought froze for a moment from fear.
It's a lie! It is not true! – Having come to my senses, I wanted to shout, but an obliging memory tied my tongue. In some incomprehensible way, I suddenly remembered such a small, insignificant event, which, moreover, belonged to a long-past era of my youth, which, it seems, I could never remember.
Here the narrator recalls an incident from his studies, when one day, during a conversation on abstract topics such as students have, one of his comrades expressed his opinion: “But why should I believe, when I can equally believe that there is no God. After all, really? And maybe He doesn’t exist?’’ To which he replied: “Maybe not.” Now, standing at the ordeal before the demonic accusers, he remembers:
“This phrase was in the full sense of the word “an idle verb”; The stupid speech of a friend could not raise any doubts in me about the existence of God, I didn’t even particularly follow the conversation - and now it turned out that this idle verb had not disappeared without a trace in the air, I had to justify myself, defend myself from the accusation brought against me, and so In this way, the Gospel legend was confirmed that, if not by the will of God, who knows the secrets of the heart of man, then by the malice of the enemy of our salvation, we really have to give an answer in every idle word.
This accusation, apparently, was the strongest argument of my destruction for the demons; they seemed to have drawn from it new strength to boldly attack me and with a frantic roar they were already spinning around us, blocking our further path.
I remembered prayer and began to pray, calling for help on all the saints I knew and whose names came to my mind. But this did not deter my enemies. A pitiful ignoramus, a Christian only in name, I almost for the first time remembered the One who is called the Intercessor of the Christian race.
But my impulse towards Her was probably ardent, my soul was probably so filled with horror that I, barely remembering, uttered Her name, when some kind of white fog appeared around us, which quickly began to cover the ugly host of demons. He hid it from my eyes before it could move away from us. Their roar and cackling could be heard for a long time, but by the way it gradually weakened and became muffled, I could understand that the terrible pursuit had left us” (pp. 41-47).
Ordeals endured before death
Thus, from numerous clear examples one can see what an important and unforgettable test for the soul after death is the meeting with demons at aerial ordeals. This, however, does not necessarily happen only immediately after death. We saw above that Rev. Anthony the Great saw ordeals while praying while outside his body. Rev. John Climacus describes an incident that happened to one monk before his death: “The day before his death, he fell into a frenzy and with open eyes looked around first at the right and then at the left side of his bed, and, as if tortured by someone, he aloud to all those present he sometimes spoke like this: “Yes, indeed, this is true; but I fasted for this for so many years"; and sometimes: "No, I didn’t do that, you’re lying." you slander me." To another, he answered: "Yes, indeed it is, and I don’t know what to say to this; but God has mercy." Truly a terrible and trembling sight was this invisible and merciless torture; and what is most terrible of all, he was accused of something that he did not do. Alas! The silent and hermit spoke about some of his sins: "I don’t know, What can I say to this, "although he spent about forty years in monasticism and had the gift of tears... During this torture, his soul was separated from his body; and it remains unknown what the decision and end of this trial was and what sentence followed" (John , abbot of Mount Sinai "Ladder", word 7, 50).
Indeed, meeting with ordeals after death is only a special and final form of that general battle that every Christian soul wages throughout its life. Vladyka Ignatius writes: “Just as the resurrection of the Christian soul from sinful death takes place during its earthly wanderings, in the same way, here on earth, its torment by the air powers, its captivity by them or liberation from them is mysteriously accomplished here on earth; during the procession through the air, this freedom and captivity only are discovered" (vol. 3, p. 159).
Some of the students of Rev. Macarius the Great was seen going through ordeals. From their testimony the following can be concluded. Individual saints pass by demonic “publicans” without hindrance, because they have already fought with them in this life and won the battle. Here is the corresponding episode from the life of St. Macaria:
“When the time came for the death of the Venerable Macarius the Great, the Cherubim, who was his Guardian Angel, accompanied by a multitude of heavenly hosts, came for his soul. The faces of the apostles, prophets, martyr, saints, reverends, righteous descended with a host of Angels. The demons settled in rows and crowds on ordeals in order to contemplate the procession of the spirit-bearing soul. She began to ascend. Standing far from her, the dark spirits shouted at their ordeals: “O Macarius! What glory have you earned!” The humble husband answered them: “No! And I’m still afraid, because I don’t know if I did anything good.” - Meanwhile, he quickly rose to the sky. From other higher ordeals, the air authorities again shouted: “Exactly, you escaped us, Macarius.” - “No,” answered he, - and I still need to escape." When he had already entered the heavenly gates, they, sobbing with anger and envy, shouted: "Exactly! You escaped us, Macarius!" - He answered them: “Protected by the power of my Christ, I escaped your machinations." fight with them and, having won victory over them, in the depths of the heart they acquire complete freedom from sin, becoming the temple and sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, making his verbal abode inaccessible to the fallen angel" (Bishop Ignatius. Vol. 3, pp. 158-159).
Private court
In Orthodox dogmatic theology, going through aerial ordeals is a stage of private judgment, through which the fate of the soul is decided until the Last Judgment. Both private judgment and the Last Judgment are carried out by Angels, who are instruments of God's justice: So it will be at the end of the age: Angels will come out and separate the wicked from among the righteous, and throw them into the fiery furnace (Matthew XIII, 49-50).
Happy are Orthodox Christians that they have the doctrine of aerial ordeals and private judgment, clearly set forth in numerous patristic writings and lives of saints; but in fact, any person who meditates deeply on the Holy Scriptures alone will come to a very close teaching. Thus, Protestant evangelist Billy Graham writes in his book about Angels: “At the moment of death, the spirit leaves the body and moves through the atmosphere. But Scripture teaches us that the devil lurks there. He is the prince of the power of the air (Eph. II, 2 ).
If the eyes of our understanding were open, we might see how the air is filled with the enemies of Christ - demons. If Satan could delay the Angel sent to Daniel on earth for three weeks, then one can imagine what kind of opposition a Christian can expect after death... The moment of death is the last opportunity for Satan to attack a true believer, but God sent his Angels to protect us at this time" (Billy Graham. Angels are secret
It is believed that the soul spends six days on an excursion in heaven, and then it goes to hell. All the time there are angels nearby who tell information about the good deeds performed by the soul during life. Ordeals are represented by demons who seek to drag the soul to hell. It is believed that there are 20 ordeals in total, but this is not the number of sins, but passions, which include many different vices.
20 ordeals of the soul after death:
- Celebration. This category includes vain conversations, irrational laughter and songs.
- Lie. A person is subjected to these ordeals if he lies in confession and to other people, as well as if he takes the name of the Lord in vain.
- Condemnation and slander. If during his lifetime a person condemned those around him and spread gossip, it means that his soul will be tested as an opponent of Christ.
- Gluttony. This includes gluttony, drunkenness, eating without prayer, and breaking fasts.
- Laziness. The ordeal of the soul will be experienced by people who were lazy and did nothing, and also received payment for work not done.
- Theft. This category includes not only sin when a person deliberately steals, but also if he borrowed money and ultimately did not pay it back.
- Love of money and stinginess. The punishment will be felt by people who turned away from God, rejected love and pretended. This also includes the sin of stinginess, when a person deliberately refuses to help those in need.
- Extortion. This includes the sin of appropriating someone else’s property, as well as investing money in dishonest things, participating in various sweepstakes and playing on the stock exchange. This sin also includes bribery and speculation.
- Not true. You will have to experience the ordeal of the soul after death if a person deliberately lied during life. This sin is the most common, since many deceive, plot, deceive, etc.
- Envy. During life, many people envy the success of others, wanting them to fall off the pedestal. Often a person experiences joy when others have a lot of problems and troubles, this is called the sin of envy.
- Pride. This category includes the following sins: vanity, contempt, arrogance, arrogance, boasting, etc.
- Anger and rage. The next ordeal that the soul goes through after death includes the following sins: desire for revenge, short temper, aggression, irritation. Such emotions cannot be felt not only towards people and animals, but even towards inanimate objects.
- rancor. Many people are vindictive during their lifetime and do not let go of grudges for a long time, which means that their souls after death will pay in full for these sins.
- Murder. The posthumous ordeal of the soul and the Last Judgment of God cannot be imagined without taking into account this sin, since it is the most terrible and unforgivable. This also includes suicide and abortion.
- Witchcraft and Demon Summoning. Carrying out various rituals, fortune telling with cards, reading conspiracies, all this is a sin that will have to be paid for after death.
- Fornication. Sexual relations between a man and a woman before marriage, as well as various thoughts and dreams regarding debauchery, are considered a sin.
- Adultery. Cheating on one of the spouses in the family is considered a serious sin, for which you will need to pay in full. This also includes civil marriage, illegal birth of a child, divorce, etc.
- Sins of Sodom. Sexual relationships between relatives, as well as unnatural relationships and various perversions, for example, lesbianism and bestiality.
- Heresy. If a person during his lifetime talks incorrectly about faith, distorts information and mocks sacred objects, it means that the soul will have to pay for what he has done.
- No Mercy. In order not to suffer for this sin, a person must show compassion during his life, help people and do good deeds.
When the sacrament of death is performed and the soul is separated from the body, it (the soul) remains on earth for the first days and, accompanied by angels, visits those places in which it used to create truth. She wanders around the house in which she was separated from her body, and sometimes stays near the coffin in which her body rests.
On the third day, every Christian soul is supposed to ascend to heaven to worship God.
On the third day, the body is consigned to the earth, and the soul must ascend to heaven: “and the dust will return to the earth, as it was, and the spirit will return to God, who gave it.”
If the soul has not known itself, has not fully realized itself here on earth, then, as a spiritual and moral being, it must, of necessity, realize itself beyond the grave; to realize what she had developed in herself, what she had adapted to, what sphere she was accustomed to, what constituted food and contentment for her. To realize oneself and thus carry out judgment on oneself before God’s judgment - this is what heavenly justice wants.
God did not want and does not want death, but man himself desired it. Here on earth, with the help of holy communion, the soul can come to consciousness, bring true repentance and receive remission of sins from God.
But behind the coffin, in order to bring the soul to the consciousness of its sinfulness, there are fallen spirits who, being the mentors of all evil on earth, will now present the soul with its sinful activity, recalling all the circumstances under which evil was committed. The soul realizes its sins. By this she already warns God’s judgment over her; so that the judgment of God, as it were, already determines what the soul itself has pronounced over itself.
Through repentance, sins committed are destroyed and are no longer mentioned anywhere, neither at the ordeal, nor at the trial.
Good angels at ordeals, for their part, represent the good deeds of the soul.
The entire space from earth to heaven represents twenty divisions or judgment seats, at which the coming soul is convicted by demons of sins.
ordeals- this is the inevitable path by which all human souls, both evil and good, make their transition from temporary earthly life to an eternal lot.
During the ordeals, the soul, in the presence of angels and demons, but also before the Eye of the All-Seeing God, is gradually and thoroughly tested in all deeds, words and thoughts.
Good souls, justified in all ordeals, are ascended by angels to the heavenly abodes for the beginning of eternal bliss, and sinful souls, detained at one or another ordeal, by the verdict of an invisible court, are drawn by demons to their dark abodes for the beginning of eternal torment.
Thus, ordeals are a private judgment that is carried out invisibly by the Lord himself through his angels over each human soul, including the evil tax collectors who accuse demons.
On the way to heaven, directed to the east, the soul encounters its first ordeal, on which evil spirits, having stopped the soul, accompanied by good angels, present her with her sins.
Questions in the ordeal begin with what we call “small” sins, universal to mankind (idle talk), and the further they go, the more important they concern sins and end in the 20th ordeal with unmercifulness and harshness towards one’s neighbor - the most serious sins, for which, according to According to the word of God, there is “judgment without mercy” for those who have not shown mercy.
The first ordeal -WORD:(untruths, verbosity, idle talk, idle talk, vanity, slander, foul language, jokes, obscenity, vulgarity, distortion of words, simplifications, grandiosity, absurdities, ridicule, laughter, laughter, name-calling, singing passionate songs, rumors, grumpiness, tongue-tiedness, vileness, incitement, blasphemy, desecration of people and the name of God, taking things in vain, rudeness.)
The second ordeal is a lie(flattery, sycophancy, pleasing with cunning, meanness, cowardice, antics, vanity, isolation, imagination, artistry, perjury, perjury, concealing sins in confession, secrecy, breaking the promise given in confession not to repeat sins, deceit.)
The third ordeal - slander(insults, condemnation, distortion of the truth, sneaking, complaints, abuse, mockery, contributing to the sins of others, impudence, cynicism, moral pressure, threats, mistrust, doubts.)
The fourth ordeal is gluttony(binge eating, binge drinking, smoking, secret eating, breaking fasts, feasting, drunkenness, drug addiction, substance abuse, etc., gluttony.)
The fifth ordeal is laziness(negligence, inattention, oblivion, oversleeping, idleness, despondency, carelessness, cowardice, weakness of will, idleness, forgetfulness, carelessness, hackwork, parasitism, unnecessaryness, coldness and lukewarmness towards the spiritual, carelessness about prayer, carelessness about salvation, insensibility.)
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The sixth ordeal is theft(embezzlement, theft, division, adventures, scams, complicity, use of stolen goods, fraud, misappropriation in the form of seizure, sacrilege.)
The seventh ordeal is love of money and stinginess.(self-interest, search for profit, over-concern, acquisitiveness, greed, stinginess, hoarding, lent money at interest, speculation, bribes.)
Eighth ordeal - interest(extortion, robbery, robbery, deceit, trickery, failure to repay debts, scams, fraud.)
The ninth ordeal is not true.(deception, falsehood, bribery, unjust trial, dishonor, extravagance, suspicion, concealment, complicity.)
The tenth ordeal is envy.(in material goods, in spiritual virtues, partiality, desire for someone else’s.)
Eleventh ordeal - pride(conceit, self-will, self-aggrandizement, exaltation, vanity, arrogance, hypocrisy, self-adoration, disobedience, non-compliance, disobedience, contempt, shamelessness, dishonesty, blasphemy, ignorance, insolence, self-justification, stubbornness, unrepentance, arrogance.)
The twelfth ordeal is rage and anger.(grudge, gloating, revenge, vindictiveness, sabotage, bullying, tricks, slander.)
The thirteenth ordeal is vindictiveness.(intransigence, hot temper, hatred, rage, blows, kicks, insolence, embitterment, despair, quarrels, squabbles, hysterics, scandal, treachery, mercilessness, rudeness, resentment.)
The fourteenth ordeal is murder.(thought, word, deed), fights, use of all kinds of instruments or drugs for murder, abortion (or complicity).
Fifteenth ordeal - magic(fortune telling, divination, astrology, horoscopes, fashion seduction, healing (extrasensory perception) hiding behind the name of God, levitation, witchcraft, witchcraft, sorcery, shamanism, witchcraft.)
Sixteenth ordeal -FORMARITY:(carnal cohabitation outside of church marriage, voluptuous views, dishonest thoughts, dreams, fantasies, raptures, pleasures, permission to sin, desecration of chastity, nightly desecrations, pornography, watching depraved films and programs, masturbation.)
The seventeenth ordeal - adultery(adultery and also seduction, violence, fall, violation of the vow of celibacy.)
Eighteenth ordeal - fornication of Sodom(perversion of nature, self-satisfaction, self-torture, violence, kidnapping, incest, corruption of minors (direct and indirect).
The Nineteenth Ordeal – Heresy(unbelief, superstition, distortions and distortions of the truth, distortions of Orthodoxy, doubts, apostasy, violation of church decrees, participation in heretical gatherings: Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, the Mother of God Center, Ivanova, Roerich, as well as in other atheistic associations and structures.)
The twentieth ordeal - no mercy(unmercy, insensibility, ruthlessness, persecution of the weak, cruelty, petrification, callousness, did not care about children, the elderly, the sick, did not give alms, did not sacrifice themselves and their time for the sake of others, inhumanity, heartlessness.)
The ordeal takes place on the third day after death. After worshiping God, it is commanded to show the soul the various abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. Walking and viewing the heavenly abodes lasts six days. The soul is surprised and glorifies the Creator of everything - God. Contemplating all this, she changes and forgets the sorrow she had while in the body. But if she is guilty of sins, then at the sight of the pleasures of the saints she begins to grieve and reproach herself for having spent her life in carelessness, disobedience and not serving God as she should.
After exploring paradise, shower on the ninth day(from his separation from the body) again ascends to worship God. And how well the Church does that it brings offerings and prayers on the ninth day for the deceased. Knowing the afterlife state of the deceased soul, corresponding to the ninth day on earth, on which the second worship of God takes place, the Church and relatives pray to the Almighty to number the departed soul among the nine faces of angels.
After the second worship, the Master commands to show the soul hell with all its torments. The guided soul sees the torment of sinners everywhere, hears crying, groaning, gnashing of teeth. For thirty days the soul walks through the hellish sections, trembling, so as not to be condemned there to imprisonment.
Finally, on the fortieth day after separation from the body, the soul ascends for the third time to worship God. And only now does the Righteous Judge determine for her a place to stay appropriate for her affairs in earthly life. This means that an honest trial of the soul takes place on the fortieth day after its departure from the body.
The Holy Church commemorates the dead on the fortieth day. The fortieth day, or sorochina, is the day of determining the fate of the soul in the afterlife. This is a private court of Christ, determining the fate of the soul only until the time of the terrible general judgment. This afterlife state of the soul, corresponding to moral life on earth, is not final and can change.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day from His resurrection, exalted the human nature assumed by Him into His Person, into a state of glory - sitting on the throne of His Divinity (“at the right hand of the Father”); So, according to this prototype, those who died on the fortieth day after death enter with their souls a certain state corresponding to their moral dignity.
Just as the Lord, having completed the work of our salvation, crowned it with His life and death with His ascension on the fortieth day, so the soul of the deceased, completing its life journey, receives reward on the fortieth day after death - its afterlife lot.
What do hell and heaven look like?
The majority of people believe that hell, the underworld, hell and fiery Gehenna are one place. Actually this is not true.
Hell- the place where the unclean live, and the earth is the place of their work. They have an artificial sun that does not provide heat, but only light. The air temperature in hell is constant throughout the year - from 0 to +4 °C.
Each type of unclean lives separately from another type. Hell can be compared to a nine-story building. Only the number of floors in it starts from top to bottom. The lower the unclean ones live, the more noble they are.
The key to hell is about four meters long and is made of an alloy of very rare metals and human blood.
On the eighth floor of hell there is inferno. It is called ashes because human souls are baked there, but not burned. The baking area was about 1200 square kilometers. The boilers contain resin and maintain temperatures between 240 and 300 °C. Cauldrons come in different capacities: for several hundred human souls or for just a few souls.
On Sundays, as well as on the days of the twelve annual Orthodox church holidays, the boilers are not heated. In addition, boilers are not heated the week before Easter and on Easter. These days sinful souls rest. There are currently just over five billion human souls in hell.
Below hell - in the abyss - is fiery Gehenna.
The underworld is a place where only the devil lives.
Heaven consists of seven heavens.
To the first sky the majority of people fall.
On the second- much less. Moreover, from the first to the second sky you won’t even get to visit, but from the second you can.
In the third heaven many saints. In heaven there is happiness, brotherhood, but there is no equality: as you serve God, such grace will come to you.
In the fourth and fifth heavens there are cherubim, seraphim, angels, dominions.
On the sixth - the Mother of God, A The Lord Himself is in the seventh heaven.
The Ordeal of Blessed Theodora.
Blessed Theodora's story about the ordeal.
At Rev. Vasily was a novice of Theodore, who served him a lot; Having accepted the monastic rank, she departed to the Lord.
One of the saint’s disciples, Gregory, had a desire to find out where Theodora was after her death, whether she had received mercy and joy from the Lord for her service to the holy elder. Often thinking about this, Gregory asked the elder to answer him what was wrong with Theodora, for he firmly believed that the saint of God knew all this. Not wanting to upset his spiritual son, Rev. Vasily prayed that the Lord would reveal to him the fate of blessed Theodora.
And so Gregory saw her in a dream - in a bright monastery, full of heavenly glory and
unspeakable blessings, which was prepared by God for St. Vasily and in which Theodora was installed through his prayers. Seeing her, Gregory was delighted and asked her how her soul was separated from her body, what she saw at her death, how she passed
air ordeals. Theodora answered these questions like this:
“Child Grigory, you asked about a terrible thing, it’s terrible to remember it. I saw faces I had never seen and heard words I had never heard. What can I tell you? I had to see and hear terrible things because of my deeds, but with the help and prayers of our father, the Monk Vasily, everything was easy for me. How can I convey to you, child, that bodily torment, that fear and confusion that the dying have to experience! Just as fire burns those thrown into it and turns them into ashes, so the pain of death in the last hour destroys a person. The death of sinners like me is truly terrible!
So, when the hour came for the separation of my soul from my body, I saw around my bed many Ethiopians, black as soot or tar, with eyes burning like coals. They made noise and shouting: some roared like cattle and animals, others barked like dogs,
some howled like wolves, and others grunted like pigs.
All of them, looking at me, became furious, threatened, gnashed their teeth, as if wanting to eat me; they prepared charters in which all my bad deeds were recorded. Then my poor soul began to tremble; the torment of death seemed not to exist for me: the menacing vision of the terrible Ethiopians was for me another, more terrible death. I turned my eyes away so as not to see their terrible faces, but they were everywhere and their voices came from everywhere.
When I was completely exhausted, I saw two Angels of God approaching me in the form of beautiful young men; their faces were bright, their eyes looked with love, the hair on their heads was as light as snow and shone like gold; the clothes looked like the light of lightning, and on the chest they were girded crosswise with golden belts.
Approaching my bed, they stood next to me on the right side, quietly talking to each other. Seeing them, I was happy; the black Ethiopians trembled and moved away; one of the bright young men addressed them with the following words:
“O shameless, damned, gloomy and evil enemies of the human race! Why do you always rush to come to the bedside of the dying, making noise, frightening and confusing every soul that is separated from the body? But don’t be too happy, you won’t find anything here, for God is merciful to her and you have no part or share in this soul.”
Hearing this, the Ethiopians began to rush about, raising a strong cry and saying: “How come we have no part in this soul? “And these are whose sins,” they said, pointing to the scrolls where everything was written down
my bad deeds - didn’t she do this and that?” And having said this, they stood and waited for my death.
Finally, death itself came, roaring like a lion and very terrible in appearance; she looked like a person, but only had no body and was made up of only bare human bones. With her were various instruments for torture: swords, spears, arrows, scythes, saws, axes and other weapons unknown to me.
My poor soul trembled when I saw this. The Holy Angels said to death: why are you delaying, free this soul from the body, free it quietly and quickly, because there are not many sins behind it.
Obeying this order, death approached me, took a small insult and first of all cut off my legs, then my arms, then gradually with other instruments it cut off my other members, separating body from body, and my whole body became dead. Then, taking the adze, she cut off my head, and it became like a stranger to me, for I could not turn it. After this, Death made some kind of drink in a cup and, bringing it to my lips, forcibly gave me a drink. This drink was so bitter that my soul could not bear it - it shuddered and jumped out of my body, as if forcibly torn out of it. Then the bright Angels took her into their arms.
I turned back and saw my body lying soulless, insensible and motionless, just as if someone takes off his clothes and, throwing them away, looks at them - so I looked at my body, from which I had freed myself, and was very surprised at this.
The demons, who were in the form of Ethiopians, surrounded the holy Angels who were holding me and shouted, showing my sins: “This soul has many sins, let him give us an answer for them!”
But the holy Angels began to look for my good deeds and, by the grace of God, they found and collected everything that, with the help of the Lord, I had done good: whether I gave alms, or fed the hungry, or gave drink to the thirsty, or clothed the naked, or led a stranger into her home and calmed him down, or served the saints, or visited the sick and in prison and helped him, or when she went to church with zeal and prayed with tenderness and tears, or when she listened with attention to church readings and
singing, or brought incense and candles to the church, or made some other offering, or poured wooden oil into the lamps in front of the holy icons and kissed them with reverence, or when she fasted and did not eat food during all holy fasts on Wednesday and Friday , or how many times I bowed and prayed at night, or when I turned to God with all my soul and cried about my sins, or when, with complete heartfelt repentance, I confessed my sins to God before my spiritual father and tried to atone for them with good deeds, or when I did for my neighbor some kind of good, or when I was not angry with someone who was at enmity with me, or when I suffered some kind of insult and abuse and did not remember them and was not angry for them, or when I returned good for evil, or when I humbled myself or lamented over someone else’s misfortune, or she herself was sick and endured it without complaint, or she was sick to another sick person, and consoled someone who was crying, or gave someone a helping hand, or helped in a good deed, or kept someone from doing something bad, or when she did not pay attention to vain matters, or refrained from swearing in vain, or slander and idle talk, and all my other smallest deeds were collected by the holy Angels, preparing to be laid against my sins.
The Ethiopians, seeing this, gnashed their teeth, because they wanted to kidnap me from the Angels and take me to the bottom of hell. At this time, our reverend father Vasily unexpectedly appeared there and said to the holy Angels: “My Lord, this soul served me a lot, calming my old age, and I prayed to God, and He gave it to me.”
Having said this, he took out from his bosom a golden bag, all full, as I thought, of pure gold, and gave it to the holy Angels, saying: “When you go through airy ordeals and evil spirits begin to torment this soul, redeem it with this from its debts.” ; By the grace of God I am rich, because I have collected many treasures for myself through my labors, and I give this bag to the soul who served me.” Having said this, he disappeared.
The crafty demons, seeing this, were in bewilderment and, raising lamentable cries, also disappeared. Then the saint of God, Vasily, came again and brought many vessels with pure oil, expensive myrrh, and, opening each vessel one after another, he poured everything on me, and the fragrance spread from me.
Then I realized that I had changed and became especially bright. The saint again turned to the Angels with the following words: “My Lords, when you have completed everything that is necessary for this soul, take it to the house prepared for me by the Lord God and settle it there.”
Having said this, he became invisible, and the holy Angels took me, and we went through the air to the east, rising to heaven.
ORDERAL 1st
When we ascended from the earth to the heights of heaven, we were first greeted by the airy spirits of the first ordeal, at which the sins of idle talk are tested. This is where we stopped.
They brought us many scrolls, where all the words that I had spoken since my youth were written down, everything that was said by me thoughtlessly and, moreover, shamefully. All the blasphemous deeds of my youth were immediately written down, as well as cases of idle laughter, to which youth is so prone. I immediately saw the bad words that I had ever spoken, the shameless songs of the world, and the spirits reproached me, pointing out the place and time and persons with whom I engaged in idle conversations and angering God with my words, and did not at all consider it a sin , and therefore did not confess this to her spiritual father. Looking at these scrolls, I was silent, as if speechless, because I had nothing to answer them: everything that was written down by them was the truth. And I was surprised how they hadn’t forgotten anything, because so many years had passed and I myself had forgotten about it a long time ago. They tested me in detail and in the most skillful way, and little by little I remembered everything. But the holy Angels who led me put an end to my ordeal at the first ordeal: they covered my sins, pointing out to the evil one some of my former good deeds, and what was missing from them to cover my sins, they added from the virtues of my father the Monk Basil and redeemed me from the first ordeal, and we moved on.
ORDERAL 2nd
We have approached another ordeal, called the ordeal of lies. Here a person gives account for every false word, and mainly for perjury, for calling on the name of the Lord in vain, for false testimonies, for failure to fulfill the vows given to God, for insincere confession of sins, and for everything like that when a person resorts to lies.
The spirits in this ordeal are fierce and cruel and especially test those going through this ordeal. When they stopped us, they began to ask me with all the details, and I was caught in the fact that I had lied twice about the smallest things.
things, so I didn’t put it as a sin for myself, and also in the fact that once, out of shame, I didn’t tell the whole truth in confession to my spiritual father. Having caught me in a lie, the spirits came to great joy and already wanted to kidnap me from the hands of the Angels, but they, to cover the sins they found, pointed to my good deeds, and replenished what was missing with the good deeds of my father, the Monk Vasily, and thereby redeemed me from this ordeal, and we went higher without hindrance.
ORDERAL 3rd
The ordeal that we later came to is called the ordeal of condemnation and slander. Here, when they stopped us, I saw how gravely the one who condemns his own sins.
neighbor, and how much evil there is when one slanders another, dishonors him, scolds him, when he swears and laughs at the sins of others, not paying attention to his own. Terrible spirits test sinners in this way because they anticipate the dignity of Christ and become judges and destroyers of their neighbors, when they themselves are immeasurably more worthy of condemnation. In this ordeal, by the grace of God, I did not find myself sinful in many ways, because throughout my entire life I was careful not to judge anyone, not to slander anyone, I did not mock anyone, I did not scold anyone; sometimes, just listening to how others condemned their neighbors, slandered them or laughed at them, in my thoughts I partly agreed with them and, through carelessness, added a little of myself to their speeches, but, having come to my senses, I immediately restrained myself. But even this, the spirits who tested me, put me into sin, and only through the merits of St. Basil did the holy Angels free me from this ordeal, and we went higher.
ORDERAL 4th
Continuing our journey, we reached a new ordeal, which is called the ordeal of gluttony. Bad spirits ran out to meet us, rejoicing that a new victim was coming to them.
The appearance of these spirits was ugly: they portrayed different types of voluptuous gluttons and vile drunkards; They carried dishes and bowls with food and various drinks. The food and drink were also vile in appearance, resembling stinking pus and vomit. The spirits of this ordeal seemed satiated and drunk, they jumped with music in their hands and did everything that feasters usually do, and cursed at the souls of sinners they brought to the ordeal.
These spirits, like dogs, surrounded us, stopped and began to show all my sins of this kind: did I ever eat secretly, or through force and beyond the need, or in the morning, like a pig, without prayer and the sign of the cross, or did I eat during holy fasts? before the time appointed by the church charter, or due to intemperance she ate before lunch, or during lunch she was over-filled. They also calculated my drunkenness, showing
cups and vessels from which I drank, and they directly said: you drank so many cups at such and such a time, and at such and such a feast, with such and such people; and in another place I drank so much and reached the point of unconsciousness and vomiting, and so many times I feasted and danced to music, clapping my hands, sang songs and jumped, and when they brought you home, I was exhausted from immeasurable drunkenness; The wicked spirits also showed me those cups from which I sometimes drank in the morning and on fasting days for the sake of guests for the sake of guests, or when, out of weakness, I drank to the point of intoxication and did not consider it a sin and did not repent, but on the contrary, I also tempted others to do the same. They also pointed out to me when on Sundays it happened to me to drink before the Holy Liturgy, and they pointed out many similar things to me from my sins of gluttony and rejoiced, already considering me in their power, and intended to take me to the bottom of hell; Even seeing herself exposed and not having anything to say against them, she trembled.
But the holy Angels, having borrowed his good deeds from the treasury of St. Basil, covered my sins and removed them from the power of those evil spirits.
Seeing this, they raised a cry: “Woe to us! Our efforts are lost! Our hope is gone! and they began to send packages through the air where my sins were written; I was glad, and then we went from there without any hindrance.
During the journey to the next ordeal, the holy Angels had a conversation with each other. They said: “This soul truly receives great help from the saint of God Vasily: if his prayers did not help her, she would have to experience great need, going through the ordeals of the air.”
This is what the Angels accompanying me said, and I took it upon myself to ask them: “My Lords, it seems to me that no one living on earth knows what happens here, and what awaits the sinful soul after death?”
The Holy Angels answered me: “Do the divine scriptures, always read in churches and preached by the servants of God, say little about this! Only those addicted to earthly vanity do not pay attention to this, finding a special delight in eating daily to satiety and getting drunk, thus making the belly their god, not thinking about the future life and forgetting the words of Scripture: woe to you, who are filled now, for you will be hungry and those who get drunk, because you thirst. They consider the Holy Scriptures to be fables and live in neglect of their souls, feasting with songs and music and every day, like the rich man of the Gospel, making merry with light. But those who are merciful and merciful, do good to the poor and needy - these receive forgiveness of their sins from God and for their alms without
ordeals undergo special torture, according to the word of Scripture: alms delivers from death and forgives all sin. Those who do alms and truth are filled with life, but those who do not try to cleanse their sins with alms cannot avoid these trials, and the dark-shaped princes of the ordeals that you saw kidnap them and, cruelly torturing them, take them to the bottom of hell and keep them there in bonds until the terrible end. judgment of Christ. And it would have been impossible for you to avoid this if not for the treasury of good deeds of St. Basil, from which your sins were covered.”
ORDERAL 5th
Conversing in this way, we reached the ordeal called the ordeal of laziness, in which a person gives an answer for all the days and hours spent in idleness. Parasites also linger here, feeding on the labors of others and not wanting to do anything themselves, or taking payment for work not completed.
There they also ask for an account from those who do not care about the glory of the name of God and are too lazy to go to the Divine Liturgy and other services of God on holidays and Sundays. Here one experiences negligence and despondency, laziness and carelessness about one’s
the soul of both worldly and spiritual people, and many from here are led into the abyss. They tested me a lot here, and if it weren’t for the virtues of St. Basil, who made up for the lack of my good deeds, then I would not have been freed from the debt to the evil spirits of this ordeal for my sins; but they covered everything, and I was taken out of there.
ORDERAL 6th
The next ordeal is theft. We were detained in it for a short time, and few good deeds were required to cover my sins, because I did not commit theft, except for one, very small one, in childhood due to foolishness.
ORDERAL 7th
After the ordeal of theft, we came to the ordeal of love of money and stinginess. But we also passed this ordeal safely, because, by the grace of God, I did not care
During my earthly life, about acquiring property, I was not a lover of money, but was content with what the Lord sent me, I was not stingy, and what I had, I diligently gave to those in need.
ORDERAL 8th
Ascending higher, we have reached the ordeal called the ordeal of extortion, where those who give away their money at interest and thereby receive unrighteous gains are tested.
Here those who appropriate for themselves what belongs to others give an account. The crafty spirits of this ordeal thoroughly searched me, and not finding any sin behind me, they gnashed their teeth; We, having thanked God, went higher.
ORDERAL 9th
We have reached the ordeal called the ordeal of untruth, where all unrighteous judges are tortured, who conduct their trials for money, acquit the guilty, condemn the innocent; here those who do not pay due wages to mercenaries or use the wrong measure when trading, etc., are tortured. But we, by the grace of God, passed this ordeal without any hindrance, covering my sins of this kind with only a few good deeds.
ORDERAL 10th
We also successfully passed the next ordeal, called the ordeal of envy. I didn’t have any sins of this kind at all, because I never envied. And although
Other sins were also experienced here: dislike, brotherly hatred, enmity, hatred, but, by the mercy of God, I turned out to be innocent of all these sins and saw how the demons furiously gnashed their teeth, but I was not afraid of them, and, rejoicing, we went higher.
ORDERAL 11th
In a similar way, we went through the ordeal of pride, where arrogant and proud spirits test those who are vain, think a lot about themselves and boast; The souls of those who are disrespectful to father and mother, as well as to the authorities appointed by God, are especially carefully tested here: cases of disobedience to them, and other acts of pride, and vain words are considered. I needed very, very few good deeds to cover my sins during this ordeal, and I received freedom.
ORDERAL 12th
The new ordeal that we later achieved was the ordeal of anger and rage; but even here, despite the fact that the spirits torturing here are fierce, they received little from us, and we continued our path, thanking God, who covered my sins with the prayers of my father, the Monk Vasily.
ORDERAL 13th
After the ordeal of anger and rage, we were presented with an ordeal in which those who harbor evil in their hearts against their neighbors and repay evil for evil are mercilessly tortured. From here the spirits of evil with particular fury reduce the souls of sinners to Tartarus. But God’s mercy did not abandon me here either: I never had anger against anyone, I did not remember what was done to me
evil, but, on the contrary, I forgave my enemies and, as far as I was able, revealed my love for them, thus defeating evil with good. Therefore, I did not turn out to be sinful in anything during this ordeal; the demons wept that I was freely leaving their cruel hands; We continued on our way in joy.
On the way, I asked the holy Angels who led me: “My Lords, I ask you, tell me how these terrible air powers know all the evil deeds of all the people who live in the world, just like mine, and not only reveal those created, but also which only the one who did them knows?”
The Holy Angels answered me: “Every Christian, from his most holy baptism, receives from God a Guardian Angel, who invisibly protects a person and throughout his life, even until the hour of death, instructs in all good and all these good deeds that a person does during his life.” earthly life, writes down so that he can receive mercy from the Lord for them and eternal reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. So the prince of darkness, who wants to destroy the human race, assigns to each person one of the evil spirits, who always follows the person and observes all his evil deeds from his youth, encouraging them with his intrigues, and collects everything that the person has done that is bad. Then he takes all these sins to the ordeal, writing each one in the appropriate place.
Hence, the princes of the air know all the sins of all the people who live in the world. When the soul is separated from the body and strives to ascend to heaven to its Creator, then evil spirits hinder it, showing lists of its sins; and if the soul has more good deeds than sins, then they cannot restrain it; when will her sins be revealed?
more than good deeds, then they hold it for a while, imprison it in the prison of God’s ignorance and torture it, as far as the power of God allows them, until the soul, through the prayers of the Church and relatives, receives freedom. If any soul turns out to be so sinful and unworthy before God that all hope for its salvation is lost and it is threatened with eternal death, then it is brought down into the abyss, where it remains until the second coming of the Lord, when eternal torment begins for it in fiery hell.
Know also that only the souls of those who are enlightened by holy baptism are tested in this way. Those who do not believe in Christ, idolaters and, in general, everyone who does not know the true God do not ascend this way, because during earthly life they are alive only in body, and in soul are already buried in hell. And when they die, the demons, without any testing, take their souls and bring them down to Gehenna and the abyss.”
ORDERAL 14th
While I was talking in this way with the holy Angels, we entered the ordeal called the ordeal of murder.
Here, not only robbery is tormented, but they demand an account for any punishment inflicted on someone, for any blow on the shoulders or head, on the cheek or neck, or when someone angrily pushes his neighbor away from him. Evil spirits experience all this here in detail and weigh it; We went through this ordeal without hindrance, leaving a small part of good deeds to cover my sins.
TOLLSHIP 15th
We also passed through the next ordeal without any hindrance, where we are tortured by spirits for sorcery, witchcraft, charm, whispering, and invoking demons. The spirits of this ordeal are similar in appearance to four-legged reptiles, scorpions, snakes and toads; in a word, it’s scary and disgusting to look at them. By the grace of God, the spirits of this ordeal did not find a single similar sin in me, and we moved on; the spirits shouted after me with rage: “Let's see how you leave the prodigal places when you get there!”
When we began to ascend higher, I asked the Angels who were leading me:
“My Lord, do all Christians go through these ordeals and is there no way for anyone to go through here without torture and fear?”
The Holy Angels answered me: “For the souls of believers ascending to heaven, there is no other way - everyone goes here, but not everyone is tested in ordeals like you, but only sinners like you, that is, those who, out of shame, did not sincerely open to the spiritual father of all your sins in confession. If someone sincerely repents of all sins, then the sins, by the mercy of God, are invisibly blotted out, and when such a soul passes here, the aerial torturers open their books and find nothing written behind it; then they can no longer frighten her, cause her anything unpleasant, and the soul ascends in joy to the throne of grace. And you, if you had repented of everything before your spiritual father and received permission from him, you would have avoided the horrors of going through ordeals; But what also helps you is that you have long stopped committing mortal sins and have been leading a virtuous life for many years, and mainly the prayers of St. Basil, whom you diligently served on earth, help you.”
TOLLSHIP 16th
During this conversation, we reached the ordeal called prodigal, where a person is tortured for all kinds of fornication and all kinds of impure passionate thoughts, for consenting to sin, for bad touches and passionate touches. The prince of this ordeal sat on the throne dressed in stinking, nasty clothes, sprinkled with bloody foam and replacing him with a royal scarlet robe; many demons stood before him. When they saw me, they were surprised that I had reached their ordeal, and they brought out scrolls in which my fornication was written down, began to count them, indicating the persons with whom I sinned in my youth, and the time when I sinned, i.e. day or night, and the place where she committed the sin. I couldn’t answer them and stood there, trembling with shame and fear.
The Holy Angels, who were leading me, began to say to the demons: “She has long since left the life of prodigal life and has spent all this time in purity and abstinence.”
The demons answered: “And we know that she stopped leading a prodigal life, but she did not reveal it to her spiritual father and did not bear penance from him to atone for her previous sins - therefore she is ours, and you either leave or redeem her with good deeds.” .
The Holy Angels pointed out many of my good deeds, and even more with the good deeds of St. Basil they covered my sins, and I barely got rid of severe misfortune. We moved on.
TOLLSHIP 17th
The next ordeal was the ordeal of adultery, where the sins of those living in marriage are tortured: if someone did not maintain marital fidelity, or desecrated his bed, he must give an account here. Those who sin in abduction for fornication and violence are also tortured here.
Here they test persons who dedicated themselves to God and took a vow of chastity, but did not keep their vow and fell into fornication; the torture of these is especially terrible. At this ordeal I turned out to be a lot of sinners, I was caught in adultery, and evil spirits already wanted to kidnap me from the hands of the Angels and take me to the bottom of hell. But there are many holy angels
They argued with them and barely redeemed me, leaving all my good deeds here to the last and adding a lot from the treasury of St. Basil. And taking me from them, they went further.
TOLLSHIP 18th
After this, we reached the ordeal of Sodom, where sins that disagree with either male or female nature are tortured, as well as copulation with demons and dumb animals, and incest, and other secret sins of this kind, which are shameful to even remember.
The prince of this ordeal, the worst of all the demons that surrounded him, was completely covered with stinking pus; its ugliness is difficult to describe. They were all burning with rage; They hastily ran out to meet us and surrounded us. But, by the grace of God, they did not find me guilty of anything sinful and therefore ran back in shame; We, rejoicing, emerged from this ordeal.
After this, the holy Angels said to me: “You saw, Theodora, terrible and nasty prodigal ordeals. Know that a rare soul passes through them without being detained, because the whole world lies in the evil of temptations and defilements and all people are voluptuous and prone to fornication. A person is already inclined towards these things from early youth, and is unlikely to save himself from uncleanness; a few who mortify their carnal lusts and therefore freely pass through these ordeals; the majority die here; fierce torturers kidnap the souls of fornicators and, terribly torturing them, take them to hell. You, Theodora, thank God that through the prayers of Saint Basil you passed through these prodigal ordeals, and you will no longer encounter delays.”
TOLLSHIP 19th
After the ordeals of fornication, we came to the ordeal of heresies, where people are tortured for incorrect opinions about objects of faith, as well as for apostasy from the Orthodox faith, distrust of the true teaching, doubts in faith, blasphemy, and the like. I went through this ordeal without stopping, and we were already not far from the gates of heaven.
ORDERAL 20th
But before we reached the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven, we were met by the evil spirits of the last ordeal, which is called the ordeal of unmercifulness and hard-heartedness. The torturers of this ordeal are especially cruel, especially their prince. In appearance, he is dry, sad, and in his rage he suffocates with merciless fire. In this ordeal, the souls of the merciless are tested without any mercy. And if someone turns out to have accomplished many feats, strictly observed fasts, was vigilant in prayer, preserved purity of heart and mortified the flesh with abstinence, but was unmerciful, unmerciful, deaf to the pleas of his neighbor - he is brought down from this ordeal, imprisoned in the hellish abyss and does not receive forgiveness forever. But we, through the prayers of St. Basil, who helped me everywhere with his good deeds, passed through this ordeal without hindrance.
This ended a series of aerial ordeals, and we joyfully approached the gates of heaven. These gates were as bright as crystal, and a radiance that could not be described was visible all around; Sun-shaped youths shone in them, and when they saw me,
led by Angels to the heavenly gates, they were filled with joy because, covered by the mercy of God, I went through all the airy ordeals. They kindly greeted us and led us inside.
What I saw and heard there, Gregory - it’s impossible to describe! I was brought to the Throne of the unapproachable glory of God, which was surrounded by Cherubim, Seraphim and many heavenly armies, praising God with ineffable songs; I
fell on her face and bowed to the invisible and inaccessible to the human mind Deity. Then the heavenly powers sang a sweet song, praising the mercy of God, which cannot be exhausted by the sins of people, and a voice was heard commanding the Angels who were leading me, so that they would take me to see the monasteries of the saints, as well as all the torments of sinners, and then calm me down in the monastery prepared for blessed Basil . At this command, I was taken everywhere, and I saw villages and abodes filled with glory and grace, prepared for those who love God. Those who led me showed me separately the monasteries of the Apostles, and the monasteries of the Prophets, and the monasteries of the Martyrs, and the monasteries of the Holy Hierarchs, and special monasteries for each rank of saints. Each monastery was distinguished by its extraordinary beauty, and in length and width I could compare each one with Constantinople, if only they were not even better and did not have many bright, not made by hand rooms. Everyone who was there, seeing me, rejoiced at my salvation, met and kissed me, glorifying God, who delivered me from the evil one.
When we walked around these monasteries, I was brought down to the underworld, and there I saw the unbearable terrible torment that was prepared in hell for sinners. Showing them, the Angels who led me said to me: “You see, Theodora, from what torment, through prayers
Saint Basil, the Lord has delivered you.” I heard screams and crying and bitter sobs there; some groaned, others exclaimed angrily: alas for us! There were those who cursed their birthday, but there was no one who took pity on them.
Having finished examining the places of torment, the Angels took me out of there and brought me to the monastery of St. Basil, telling me: “Now St. Basil is commemorating you.” Then I realized that I had come to this place of peace forty days after my separation from the body.”
Blessed Theodora recounted all this to Gregory in a dream vision and showed him the beauty of that monastery and the spiritual riches that were gained through the arduous exploits of St. Basil; She also showed Gregory Theodora both pleasure and glory, and various golden-leafed and fruit-rich gardens, and in general all the spiritual joy of the righteous.
ordeals
Ordeals are obstacles through which every soul must go through upon separation from the body on the way to the throne of God for private judgment; this is a test (conviction of sins) of the soul carried out in the air by evil spirits. The ordeal takes place on the third day after death.
Two angels lead the soul along this path. Each of the ordeals is controlled by demons - unclean spirits who try to take the soul going through the ordeal to hell. Demons provide a list of sins related to a given ordeal (a list of lies at the ordeal of lies, etc.), and angels provide good deeds committed by the soul during life.
There are 20 ordeals in total:
1. idle talk and foul language
2. lies
3. condemnation and slander
4. binge eating and drunkenness
5. laziness
6. theft
7. love of money and stinginess
8. covetousness
9. untruths and vanity
10. envy
11. pride
12. anger
13. rancor
14. robbery
15. sorcery, charm, poisoning with herbs, summoning demons
16. fornication
17. adultery
18. sins of sodom
19. idolatry and all kinds of heresies
20. unmerciful and hard-hearted
1. Ordeal2. Ordeals only reveal the state of a person’s soul that has already developed during earthly life3. The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church
1. Trials
St. Theophan the Recluse explains the spiritual meaning of ordeals: “What are ordeals? - This is an image of a private court after death, at which the entire life of the dying person is reviewed with all sins and good deeds. Sins are recognized as atoned for by opposite good deeds or corresponding repentance.
Find “Cheti-Minei month March”. There, on the 26th, the passage of the ordeals of St. Elder Theodora is described. - All unjustified sinners who die in life undergo ordeal. Only perfect Christians do not linger at ordeals, but ascend straight to heaven like a bright streak.”
Saint John (Maksimovich): “The soul...continues to live, without ceasing its existence for a single moment. Through many manifestations of the dead we have been given partial knowledge of what happens to the soul when it leaves the body. When vision with the physical eyes ceases, spiritual vision begins.
...on leaving the body the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually she is drawn to those who are closer to her in spirit, and if, while in the body, she was influenced by some of them, then she will remain dependent on them even after leaving the body, no matter how disgusting they turned out to be upon meeting.
During the first two days the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit those places on earth that are dear to it, but on the third day it moves to other spheres. At this time (on the third day) the soul passes through legions of evil spirits who block its path and accuse it of various sins into which they themselves have drawn it.
According to various revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called “ordeals,” at each of which one or another sin is tortured; Having gone through one ordeal, the soul comes to the next. And only after successfully passing through all of them can the soul continue its journey without being immediately thrown into Gehenna.
How terrible these demons and ordeals are can be seen from the fact that the Mother of God Herself, when Archangel Gabriel informed Her of the approach of death, prayed to His Son to deliver Her soul from these demons, and in response to Her prayers the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from Heaven accept the soul of His Most Pure Mother and take Her to Heaven. (This is visibly depicted on the traditional Orthodox icon of the Assumption.) The third day is truly terrible for the soul of the deceased, and for this reason it especially needs prayers.”
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) writes:
“After the soul separates from the body, independent life begins for it in the invisible world. The spiritual experience accumulated by the Church makes it possible to construct a clear and harmonious teaching about the afterlife of man.
The disciple of St. Macarius of Alexandria (+ 395) says: “When we walked through the desert, I saw two angels who accompanied St. Macarius, one on the right side, the other on the left.” One of them talked about what the soul does in the first 40 days after death: “when on the third day there is an offering in the Church, the soul of the deceased receives from the angel guarding it relief from the grief that it feels from separation from the body; receives because praise and offerings in the Church of God have been made for her, which is why good hope is born in her. For for two days the soul, together with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk on the earth wherever it wants. Therefore, the soul that loves the body sometimes wanders around the house in which it was separated from the body, sometimes around the coffin in which the body is laid... And the virtuous soul goes to those places in which it used to do the truth. On the third day, He who rose from the dead on the third day - the God of all - commands, in imitation of His Resurrection, every Christian soul to ascend to heaven to worship the God of all. So, the good Church is in the habit of making an offering and prayer for the soul on the third day. ... The great ascetic of our time, St. John (Maksimovich) writes: “It should be borne in mind that the description of the first two days after death gives a general rule, which in no case covers all situations... the saints, who were not at all attached to worldly things, lived in constant anticipation of the transition to another world , are not drawn even to the places where they did good deeds, but immediately begin their ascent to heaven.”
The Orthodox Church attaches great importance to the doctrine of aerial ordeals, which begin on the third day after the separation of the soul from the body. She passes through the airspace of the “outpost”, where evil spirits accuse her of her sins and strive to keep her as one akin to them. The holy fathers write about this (Ephraim the Syrian, Athanasius the Great, Macarius the Great, John Chrysostom, etc.). The soul of a man who lived according to the commandments of God and the statutes of St. The church passes through these “outposts” painlessly and after the fortieth day receives a temporary resting place. It is necessary for loved ones to pray in Church and at home for the departed, remembering that until the Last Judgment much depends on these prayers. “Truly, truly, I say to you, the time is coming, and has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live” (John 5:25).”
Monk Mitrofan writes in his book “Afterlife”:
“The immeasurable space between heaven and earth, or between the triumphant and militant Churches, this space is in ordinary spoken human language, and in St. In the Scriptures, and in the writings of the Holy Fathers, it is called air. So, here air is not called the subtle ethereal substance surrounding the earth, but space itself.
This space is filled with rejected, fallen angels, whose entire activity is to deviate a person from salvation, making him an instrument of untruth. They cunningly and hostilely act on our internal and external activities in order to make us accomplices of their destruction: “Seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8), - Apostle Peter testifies about the devil. That the air space is the dwelling place of evil spirits is evidenced by the chosen vessels of the Holy Spirit, and we believe this truth.
From the very moment that followed the fall of our first parents and the expulsion of sweets from paradise, the Cherub was placed at the tree of life (Gen. 3:24), but another, fallen angel, in turn, stood on the way to paradise in order to prevent man from entering . The gates of heaven were closed for man, and the prince of the world from that time on did not allow a single human soul separated from the body to enter heaven.
Both the righteous, except Elijah and Enoch, and sinners descended to hell.
The first to harmlessly pass this impassable path to paradise was the Conqueror of Death, the Destroyer of Hell; and the doors of heaven opened from that time. The prudent thief followed the Lord harmlessly, and all the Old Testament righteous people, the saints brought out of hell by the Lord, walk this path harmlessly, or, if they sometimes suffer demonic stops, then their virtues outweigh their falls.
If we, being already enlightened by the light of Christ and having free will to do right or wrong, constantly become their captives, doers of unrighteousness, executors of their vile will, then much less will they leave the soul when it is separated from the body and must go to God through air space.
Of course, they will present to the soul all the rights to own it, as a faithful executor of their suggestions, thoughts, desires and feelings.
Demons present her sinful activity in its entirety, and the soul realizes the justice of this testimony.
If the soul has not recognized itself, has not fully recognized itself here on earth, then, as a spiritual and moral being, it must, of necessity, recognize itself beyond the grave; to realize what she had developed in herself, what she had adapted to, what sphere she was accustomed to, what constituted food and pleasure for her. To recognize oneself and thus pronounce judgment on oneself, before God’s judgment - this is what heavenly justice wants. Behind the coffin, in order to bring the soul to the consciousness of its sinfulness, there are fallen spirits who, being the teachers of all evil on earth, will now present the soul with its sinful activity, and will recall all the circumstances under which evil was committed. The soul realizes its sins. By this she already warns God’s judgment over her; so that the judgment of God, as it were, already determines what the soul itself has pronounced over itself.
Good angels at ordeals, for their part, represent the good deeds of the soul.”
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that ordeals are the execution of God’s justice over the soul, carried out through the mediation of angels, both holy and evil, so that the soul recognizes itself:
“All who have clearly rejected the Redeemer are henceforth the property of Satan: their souls, upon separation from their bodies, descend straight to hell. But even Christians who deviate towards sin are not worthy of immediate relocation from earthly life to blissful eternity. Justice itself demands that these deviations to sin, these betrayals of the Redeemer be weighed and evaluated. Trial and analysis are necessary to determine the degree of deviation towards sin of the Christian soul, in order to determine what prevails in it - eternal life or eternal death. And every Christian soul, upon its departure from the body, awaits the impartial Judgment of God, as the holy Apostle Paul said: “it lies for man alone to die, and then comes the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).
The justice of God carries out judgment on Christian souls who have departed from their bodies, through angels, both holy and evil. The former, during a person’s earthly life, notice all his good deeds, and the latter notice all his crimes. When the soul of a Christian begins to ascend to heaven, guided by the holy Angels, dark spirits expose it with its sins unerased by repentance, as victims to Satan, as guarantees of communication and the same eternal fate with him.
To torture souls passing through the airspace, the dark authorities have installed separate courts and guards in remarkable order. Along the layers of heaven, from the earth to the sky itself, there are guard regiments of fallen spirits. Each department is in charge of a special type of sin and torments the soul in it when the soul reaches this department. The aerial demonic guards and judgment seats are called “ordeals” in the patristic writings, and the spirits serving in them are called “publicans.”
In the time of Christ and in the first centuries of the Christian Church, the collector of state duties was called a publican. Since this duty, according to the simplicity of ancient customs, was entrusted to a person without positive responsibility and accountability, the tax collectors allowed themselves all means of violence, various kinds of tricks, fault-finding, countless abuses and inhuman robbery. They usually stood at city gates, in markets and other public places, so that no one could escape their watchful observation. The behavior of the tax collectors made them a terror to the people. According to his concept, the name of the publican expressed a person without feelings, without rules, capable of any crime, of any humiliating act, breathing, living by them - a rejected person. In this sense, the Lord compared the stubborn and desperate disobedient of the Church with a pagan and a tax collector (Matthew 18:17). For the Old Testament worshipers of the true God, nothing was more disgusting than a servant of idols: the publican was just as hateful to them. The name publicans spread from people to the demons who guard the sunrise from earth to heaven, due to the similarity of the office and its performance. As sons and confidants of lies, demons convict human souls not only of the sins they have committed, but also of those they have never been subjected to. They resort to fabrications and deceptions, combining slander with shamelessness and arrogance, in order to snatch the soul from the hands of angels and multiply with it countless prisoners of hell.”
On the way to heaven, the soul encounters the first ordeal, at which evil spirits, stopping the soul, accompanied by good angels, present it with its sins in words (much verbosity, idle talk, idle talk, foul language, ridicule, blasphemy, singing songs and passionate hymns, disorderly exclamations, laughter, laughter, etc.).
The second ordeal is lies (any lie, perjury, excessive invocation of the name of God, failure to fulfill vows given to God, concealing sins before the confessor in confession).
The third ordeal is slander (slander of one's neighbor, condemnation, destruction, dishonoring him, cursing, ridicule while forgetting one's own sins and shortcomings, while not paying attention to them).
The fourth ordeal is gluttony (overeating, drunkenness, eating without prayer, breaking fasts, lust, satiety, feasting, in a word - all types of pleasing the belly). The fifth ordeal is laziness (laziness and negligence in serving God, abandonment of prayer, parasitism, mercenaries who perform their duties with negligence).
The sixth ordeal is theft (all kinds of theft - gross and specious, open and secret).
The seventh ordeal is love of money and stinginess. Eighth - usurers (usurers, extortionists and appropriators of others' property).
The ninth ordeal is untruths (unrighteous: judgment, measure, weight and all other untruths).
The tenth ordeal is envy. The eleventh ordeal is pride (pride, vanity, conceit, self-aggrandizement, failure to give due honor to parents, spiritual and civil authorities, disobedience to them and disobedience to them).
Twelfth - rage and anger.
The thirteenth is vindictiveness. The fourteenth is murder. The fifteenth is sorcery (witchcraft, seduction, poisoning, slander, whispers, magical invocation of demons).
The sixteenth ordeal is fornication (everything that relates to this defilement: thoughts, desires and deeds themselves; fornication of persons not bound by the sacrament of marriage, pleasure in sin, voluptuous views, bad touch and touch).
Seventeenth - adultery (failure to maintain marital fidelity, prodigal falls of persons who have dedicated themselves to God).
The eighteenth ordeal is Sodom (unnatural prodigal sins and incest).
The nineteenth ordeal is of heresies (false wisdom about faith, doubt in faith, apostasy from the Orthodox faith, blasphemy).
And finally, the last, twentieth ordeal - unmercifulness (unmercy and cruelty).
Moreover, if a Christian confessed his sin in confession and repented of it, then he will not be remembered at the ordeal. Through repentance, sins committed are destroyed and are no longer mentioned anywhere, neither at the ordeal, nor at the trial. In the life of St. Basil the New, we read the question of Theodora, who was going through ordeals, and the answer to it:
“After this, I asked the Angels who accompanied me: “For every sin that a person commits in life, he is tortured in these ordeals, after death, or, perhaps, is it possible to atone for his sin in life in order to be cleansed of it and there is no more suffering for him here. I’m just in awe of how detailed everything goes.” The angels answered me that not everyone is tested like this in ordeals, but only those like me, who did not confess sincerely before death. If I had confessed to my spiritual father without any shame or fear everything sinful and if I had received forgiveness from my spiritual father, then I would have gone through all these ordeals without hindrance and I would not have had to be tortured for a single sin. But since I did not want to sincerely confess my sins to my spiritual father, here they torture me for this.
...Those who diligently strive for repentance always receive forgiveness from God, and through this a free transition from this life to the blissful life after death. The evil spirits who are in ordeals along with their scriptures, having opened them, do not find anything written, for the Holy Spirit makes everything written invisible. And they see this, and know that everything written down by them has been blotted out thanks to confession, and then they grieve greatly. If the person is still alive, then they try to write some other sins in this place again. Great, truly, is the salvation of a person in confession!.. It saves him from many troubles and misfortunes, makes it possible to go through all the ordeals without hindrance and get closer to God. Others do not confess in the hope that there will still be time for salvation and forgiveness of sins; others are simply ashamed to tell their confessor their sins in confession - these are the people who will be tested strictly in the ordeals.”
Blessed Diadochos writes about the need for special care in relation to our involuntary, sometimes unknown sins:
“If we do not confess them enough, then during our exodus we will find an indefinite fear in ourselves.” “And we, who love the Lord, should wish and pray that at that time we may be free from any fear: for whoever is then in fear will not pass freely past the princes of hell, because they consider the fearfulness of the soul to be a sign of its complicity in their evil, as it is in them themselves.”
Knowing the afterlife state of the soul, that is, the passage of ordeals and the appearance to God for worship, corresponding to the third day, the Church and relatives, wanting to prove that they remember and love the deceased, pray to the Lord for the harmless passage of the soul through air ordeals and for the forgiveness of its sins. The liberation of the soul from sins constitutes its resurrection for a blessed, eternal life. So, following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day, a requiem service is served for the deceased, so that he too would be resurrected on the third day for an endless, glorious life with Christ.
2. Ordeals only reveal the state of a person’s soul that has already developed during earthly life
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):... Just as the resurrection of the Christian soul from sinful death takes place during its earthly wanderings, in exactly the same way it is mysteriously accomplished here on earth, its torture by the aerial authorities, its captivity by them or liberation from them; when moving through the air, this freedom and captivity are only revealed.”
Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets: “Some are worried about when the Second Coming will take place. However, for a dying person, the Second Coming, so to speak, is already coming. Because a person is judged according to the state in which death overtakes him.”
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): The great saints of God, who have completely passed from the nature of the old Adam into the nature of the New Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, in this graceful and holy newness, with their honest souls, go through the airy demonic ordeals with extraordinary speed and great glory. They are carried to Heaven by the Holy Spirit...
Saint Theophan the Recluse, in his interpretation of the 80th verse of the 118th Psalm (“Be my heart blameless in your justifications, so that I will not be ashamed”) explains the last words as follows:
“The second moment of non-shame is the time of death and going through ordeals. No matter how wild the thought of ordeals may seem to smart people, they cannot be avoided. What are these Mytniks looking for in those passing by? Whether they have their goods. What is their product? Passion. Therefore, whoever has an immaculate heart and is free from passions, they cannot find anything to which they could become attached; on the contrary, the quality opposite to them will strike them themselves like lightning arrows. To this, one of the little learned people expressed another thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively and charmingly, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, during earthly life, passions are expelled from the heart and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her. This means that it is very doubtful that the soul, while it still has sympathies for the objects of any passions, will not be ashamed at the ordeal. The shame here is that the soul itself is thrown into hell.”
3. The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church
His Eminence Macarius writes: “The continuous, ever-present and widespread use in the Church of the doctrine of ordeals, especially among the teachers of the fourth century, indisputably testifies that it was handed down to them from the teachers of previous centuries and is based on the apostolic tradition” (Right. Dogma. Theology. Volume 5- y).
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church. “There is no doubt” that the holy Apostle Paul speaks of them when he proclaims that Christians are destined to wage war against the spirits of wickedness in high places. We find this teaching in the most ancient church Tradition and in church prayers. The Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of God, notified by the Archangel Gabriel of her approaching repose, brought tearful prayers to the Lord for the deliverance of Her soul from the evil spirits in heaven. When the very hour of Her honorable dormition had come, when the Son Himself and Her God descended to her with tens of angels and righteous spirits, She, before betraying Her most holy soul into the all-holy hands of Christ, uttered the following words in prayer to Him: “Receive now in My spirit in the world and protect Me from the dark region, so that no aspiration of Satan meets Me.”
Saint Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria, in his biography of Saint Anthony the Great, narrates the following:
“One day he (Antony), at the approach of the ninth hour, having begun to pray before eating food, was suddenly caught up in the Spirit and lifted up by the Angels to a height. The air demons opposed his procession; The angels, arguing with them, demanded an explanation of the reasons for their opposition, because Anthony had no sins. The demons tried to expose the sins he had committed since birth; but the Angels stopped the mouths of the slanderers, telling them that they should not count his sins from birth, already blotted out by the grace of Christ, but let them present, if they have, the sins he committed after the time he dedicated himself to God by entering monasticism. When accusing the demons, they uttered many blatant lies; but since their slander was devoid of evidence, a free path opened for Anthony. He immediately came to his senses and saw that he was standing in the very place where he stood for prayer. Forgetting about food, he spent the whole night in tears and lamentations, thinking about the multitude of human enemies, about the fight against such an army, about the difficulty of the path to heaven through the air and about the words of the Apostle, who said: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but to the beginning of the power of this air (Eph. 6:12), which, knowing that the powers of the air are only seeking this, are concerned about this with all their efforts, are straining and striving for this in order to deprive us of free passage to heaven, admonishes: “ take up all the weapons of God, that you may be able to resist in the day of cruelty" (Eph. 6:13), "so that the adversary may be put to shame, having nothing to say reproachfully against us" (Titus 2:8).
Saint John Chrysostom, having said that a dying person, even if he was a great ruler on earth, is overcome with confusion, fear, and bewilderment when he “sees the terrible angelic powers and the opposing forces that have come” to separate the soul from the body, adds:
“Then we need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, great intercession from the Angels as we move through the air. If, when traveling to a foreign country or a foreign city, we need a guide, then how much more do we need guides and assistants to guide us past the invisible elders and authorities of the world rulers of this air, called persecutors, publicans, and tax collectors!
Venerable Macarius the Great says:
“Hearing that under the heavens there are rivers of serpents, mouths of lions, dark powers, a burning fire that throws all members into confusion, don’t you know that if you do not receive the pledge of the Holy Spirit when you leave the body, they will seize your soul and prevent you from entering heaven".
“When the human soul leaves the body, a great mystery takes place. For if she is guilty of sins, then hordes of demons come; evil angels and dark forces take this soul and drag it to their side. No one should be surprised by this. For if a person, while still alive, while still in this world, submitted, surrendered and enslaved him, then will they not possess him any more and enslave him when he leaves this world? As for the other, better part, it happens to them differently. That is, with the holy servants of God even in this life there are angels, holy spirits surround them and protect them. And when their souls are separated from their bodies, the faces of angels accept them into their society, into a bright life, and thus lead them to the Lord.”
Venerable Ephraim the Syrian: “When the sovereign forces approach, when terrible armies come, when the divine takers command the soul to move from the body, when, dragging us by force, they take us to the inevitable judgment seat, then, seeing them, the poor man... all comes to hesitation, as if from earthquakes, everything trembles... The divine takers, having taken the soul, ascend through the air, where the rulers, powers and rulers of the world of opposing forces stand. These are our evil accusers, terrible tax collectors, inventory clerks, tax collectors; they meet on the way, describe, examine and calculate the sins and handwritings of this person, the sins of youth and old age, voluntary and involuntary, committed by deed, word, thought. There is great fear there, great trepidation for the poor soul, the indescribable need that she will then suffer from the countless number of enemies surrounding her in darkness, slandering her, in order to prevent her from ascending to heaven, settling in the light of the living, and entering the land of life. But the holy angels, having taken the soul, take it away.”
“Do you not know, my brethren, what fear and what suffering we are subjected to at the hour of departure from this life when the soul is separated from the body?.. Good Angels and the Heavenly Army approach the soul, as well as all... the opposing forces and princes of darkness. Both want to take the soul or assign it a place. If the soul acquired good qualities here, led an honest life and was virtuous, then on the day of its departure these virtues, which it acquired here, become good Angels surrounding it, and do not allow any opposing force to touch it. In joy and joy, with the holy Angels, they take her and carry her to Christ, the Lord and King of Glory, and worship Him together with her and with all the Heavenly Powers. Finally, the soul is taken to a place of rest, to unspeakable joy, to eternal light, where there is no sorrow, no sighing, no tears, no worries, where there is immortal life and eternal joy in the Kingdom of Heaven with all others who have pleased God. If the soul in this world lived shamefully, indulging in the passions of dishonor and being carried away by carnal pleasures and the vanity of this world, then on the day of its departure the passions and pleasures that it acquired in this life become crafty demons and surround the poor soul, and do not allow one to approach her Angels of God; but together with the opposing forces, the princes of darkness, they take her, pitiful, shedding tears, sad and lamenting, and take her to dark places, gloomy and sad, where sinners await the day of Judgment and eternal torment, when the devil and his angels will be cast down.”
The great saint of God, viewer of mysteries, Saint Niphon, Bishop of the Cyprus city of Constantius, standing one day in prayer, saw the heavens open and many Angels, some of whom descended to earth, others ascended to the mountain, lifting human souls to heavenly abodes. He began to listen to this spectacle, and behold, two Angels strived for heights, carrying their souls. When they approached the fornication ordeal, the demons came out and said with anger: “This soul is ours! How dare you carry it past us when it is ours?” The Angels answered: “On what basis do you call her yours?” - The demons said: “Until her death, she sinned, being defiled not only by natural, but also by supernatural sins, and she condemned her neighbor, and what’s worse, she died without repentance: what do you say to this?” - The angels answered: “Truly we will not believe either you or your father, Satan, until we ask the guardian angel of this soul.” The guardian angel asked said: “Exactly, this man has sinned a lot; but as soon as he became ill, he began to cry and confess his sins to God. Whether God has forgiven him, He knows. To Him is the power, To Him is glory to the righteous judgment.” Then the Angels, despising the accusation of demons, entered with their souls into the gates of heaven. - Then the Blessed One saw another soul lifted up by the Angels. The demons, running out to them, cried out: “Why are you carrying souls without our knowledge, like this gold-loving, prodigal, quarrelsome, practicing robbery?” The Angels answered: “We probably know that, although she fell into all this, she cried, sighed, confessing and giving alms, and therefore God granted her forgiveness.” The demons said: “If this soul is worthy of God’s mercy, then take the sinners of the whole world; We have no business working here.” The Angels answered them: “All sinners who confess their sins with humility and tears will accept forgiveness by the grace of God; those who die without repentance are judged by God.” Thus, having shamed the demons, they passed on. Again the Holy One saw the ascended soul of a certain God-loving, pure, merciful man, loving to all. The demons stood in the distance and gnashed their teeth at this soul; The angels of God came out to meet her from the gates of heaven and, greeting her, said: “Glory to Thee, Christ God, that Thou didst not deliver her into the hands of her enemies and delivered her from the depths of hell!” - Blessed Niphon also saw that demons were drawing a certain soul to hell. This was the soul of one slave, whom the master tormented with hunger and beatings and who, unable to bear the torment, hanged himself, having been taught by the devil. The guardian angel walked in the distance and wept bitterly; The demons rejoiced. And a command came from God to the weeping Angel to go to Rome, there to take custody of the newborn baby, who was being baptized at that time. - Again the Saint saw a soul carried through the air by Angels, which was taken from them by demons at the fourth ordeal and cast into the abyss. It was the soul of a man given over to fornication, sorcery and robbery, who died suddenly without repentance.
The Monk Isaiah the Hermit, in his will to his disciples, commanded “to have death before our eyes every day and to take care of how to accomplish the exodus from the body and how to pass by the powers of darkness that are about to meet us in the air.”
The Monk Abba Dorotheos, a monastic student of the same hostel of Abba Serida, writes in one of his letters: “When the soul is insensitive (cruelty), frequent reading of the Divine Scripture and the touching words of the God-bearing fathers, remembrance of the Last Judgment of God, the exodus of the soul from the body, is useful. about the terrible forces that would meet her, with whose complicity she did evil in this short and disastrous life.
The doctrine of ordeals, like the doctrine of the location of heaven and hell, is found as a well-known and generally accepted teaching throughout the entire area of worship of the Orthodox Church.”
See also: Death.
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) about the ordeals. - St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). A word about death St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). An offering to modern monasticism:
Chapter 2. People will be judged at the court of God according to the Gospel commandments
Trials. - Saint Theophan the Recluse. Guide to spiritual lifeSt. Theophan the Recluse. Illness and deathAir ordeals. - Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose). Soul after death:
8. Teachings of Bishop Theophan the Recluse on aerial ordeals
Eyewitness accounts of the ordealsVision of Gregory, a disciple of St. Basil, about the ordeals of St. TheodoraK. Ikskul. Incredible to many, but a true incident: The Resurrection of Claudia Ustyuzhanina
The Tale of Taxiot the Warrior The Life of Our Venerable Father Mark of Athens Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology:
In the 19th century, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, speaking about the state of the soul after death, wrote: “It should, however, be noted that, just as in general in the depiction of objects of the spiritual world, for us clothed in flesh, features that are more or less sensual, humanoid are inevitable, so , in particular, they are inevitably admitted in the detailed teaching about the ordeals that the human soul goes through when separated from the body. Therefore, we must firmly remember the instruction given by the angel Venerable. Macarius of Alexandria, as soon as he began to speak about ordeals: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” It is necessary to imagine the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but as much as is possible for us in the spiritual sense, and not get attached to the particulars that are given by different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, despite the unity of the basic thought about the ordeals.” These extremely significant words of the angel cannot in any way diminish when we come into contact with messages about that world. For our human psyche is very inclined to take images for reality, as a result of which completely distorted ideas are created not only about heaven, hell, ordeals, etc., but also about God, about spiritual life, about salvation. These distortions easily lead a Christian into paganism. And a pagan Christian - what could be worse?
What earthly and heavenly things are being talked about here? About ordeals, which, despite the simplicity of their earthly depiction in Orthodox hagiographic literature, have a deep spiritual, heavenly meaning. There is nothing like this in any of the religious teachings. Even Catholicism, with its dogma of purgatory, distorted the picture of the posthumous state of man. Purgatory and ordeals are fundamentally different things. Purgatory, in the views of Catholic theologians, is a place of torment to compensate for the lack of human merit in satisfying the justice of God. Ordeal is a trial of conscience and a test of the spiritual state of the soul in the face of God’s love, on the one hand, and devilish passionate temptations, on the other.
Church tradition says that there are twenty ordeals - twenty certain tests of the state of the soul before, if you like, its home, which we call the Kingdom of God. These are twenty steps of ascent to this house, which can become the steps of a person’s fall - depending on his condition.
Somewhere in the 50s, one bishop died - an old, sweet, pleasant man, but it was difficult to call him a spiritual and ascetic. His death was very significant - he kept looking around him and saying: “Everything is wrong, everything is wrong. Not like that at all!”
His surprise is understandable. Indeed, although we all understand that “everything is wrong” there, we nevertheless involuntarily imagine that life in the image and likeness of this life. We imagine both hell and heaven according to Dante, and the ordeal, again, in accordance with those pictures that we look at with curiosity in simple brochures. Whether we want it or not, we cannot in any way renounce these earthly ideas.
And, surprisingly, modern science can provide us with some help in understanding this issue.
For example, nuclear physicists who study the world of elementary particles argue that in the macroworld - that is, in the world in which we live - there are no concepts that can adequately express the realities of the microworld. Therefore, in order to somehow present them to the general public, physicists are forced to find and invent words, names and images taken from our usual experience. True, the picture sometimes emerges as fantastic, but understandable in its constituent parts. Well, for example, imagine - time flows backwards. What does it mean - backwards, how can this time flow in reverse? First the duck falls, and then the hunter shoots? This is absurd. But one of the theories of quantum mechanics points in this way to the processes occurring in the intra-atomic world. And it seems that we are beginning to understand something... although without understanding anything.
Or take the concept of a wave particle, called “waveicle” in English. If you think about it, this is a rather absurd expression - a wave cannot be a particle, and a particle cannot be a wave. But with the help of this paradoxical concept, which does not fit into the framework of our common sense, scientists try to express the dual nature of the nature of matter at the level of the atom, the dual aspect of elementary particles (which, depending on the specific situation, appear either as particles or as waves). Modern science offers many such paradoxes. How are they useful to us? By what they show: if a person’s capabilities are so limited in knowing and expressing in “human language” the realities of this world, then, obviously, they are even more limited in understanding the world of that world. This is the main thing to keep in mind when trying to comprehend the same ordeals and, in general, the posthumous existence of the soul. The realities there are completely different, everything there is not the same as here.
Posthumous exam for goodness
According to church teaching, after a three-day stay at the tomb, the soul of the deceased contemplates the heavenly abodes from the 3rd to the 9th day, and from the 9th to the 40th day it is shown the torment of hell. How can we understand these earthly images, “earthly things”?
The soul, being by nature a resident of that world, freed from the plump body, becomes capable of seeing that world in a completely different way, characteristic of it, in contrast to the body. There everything is revealed to the soul. And if, as the Apostle Paul writes, in earthly conditions we see “as if through a glass darkly,” then there “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12), that is, as it really is. This vision or knowledge, in contrast to earthly knowledge, which is mainly external in nature and often purely rational, after the death of the body acquires a different character - participation in what is known. In this case, participation means the unity of the knower with the known. So the soul there enters into unity with the world of spirits, for it itself is spiritual in this sense. But with what spirits does the soul unite? We can believe that each virtue has its own spirit, its own angel, just as each passion has its own spirit, its own demon. But more on that later.
For some reason, it is usually believed that the soul is tested only when it comes to its passions, that is, in the period from the 9th to the 40th day. However, there is no doubt that the soul is tested for everything: both for good and for evil.
So after three days, a kind of personality test begins. First - in the face of good. The soul follows the path of all the virtues (according to the Apostle, these are “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, meekness, self-control,” etc. - Gal. 5; 22). For example, the soul finds itself in the face of meekness. Will she perceive it as that precious quality that she strove for and that she was looking for in her earthly life, although she could not acquire it in those conditions, or, on the contrary, will she be repelled by meekness as something alien and unacceptable? Will she unite with the spirit of meekness or not? Thus, during six earthly days there will be a special test of the soul in the face of all virtues.
At the same time, I would like to note that every virtue is beautiful, for God Himself is ineffable Beauty, and the soul with all its fullness sees there the beauty of these properties of God. And in this, if you like, “exam of goodness,” the soul is tested: has it, in the conditions of earthly freedom, acquired at least some desire for this eternal Beauty?
And the exam for evil
A similar test, the same examination of the soul continues, from the 9th to the 40th day. A stage begins, which is usually called ordeals. There are twenty of them, and much more is said about them than about contemplating the beauty of virtues. The reason for this, apparently, is that the overwhelming majority of people are immeasurably more enslaved by passions than they are involved in virtues. That is why this exam requires more time. Here the soul reveals the full power of each of its passions - hatred, envy, pride, deceit, fornication, gluttony...
We all know what the fire of passion means - despite reason, despite the desire for good, despite even one’s own well-being, a person suddenly submits, for example, to insane anger, greed, lust, and so on! Submits to a “favorite” passion or passions. This very thing begins there, but in the face of not just conscience, not just convictions - but in front of that Shrine itself, in the face of that Beauty that has just been revealed to the soul in all its possible completeness. It is here that the power of passion that a person acquired during earthly life is revealed in its entirety. Therefore, the one who did not fight passion, but, moreover, served it, for whom it became the meaning of his life, will not be able to renounce it even in the face of God’s Love itself. So there is a breakdown at the ordeal and the descent of the soul into the bosom of a meaningless and unquenchable fire of burning passion. For under earthly conditions passion could sometimes still obtain food for itself for some time. There the torment of Tantalus really opens up.
By the way, they're starting ordeal from the most seemingly innocent sin. From idle talk. From something to which we usually do not attach any importance. The Apostle James says exactly the opposite: “... the tongue... is an uncontrollable evil; it is filled with deadly poison” (James 3; 8). And the Holy Fathers and even pagan sages call idleness and its natural and usual manifestation - idle talk - the mother of all vices. Rev. John of Karpafsky, for example, wrote: “Nothing upsets a usually good mood more than laughter, jokes and idle talk.”
The twenty ordeals cover, I would say, twenty categories of passions, not specific sins, but passions, each of which includes many varieties of sins. That is, each ordeal covers a whole nest of related sins. Let's say theft. It has many types: direct, when someone got into a person’s pocket, and accounting additions, and inappropriate, in one’s own interests, use of budget funds, and bribes for the purpose of profit, etc. and so on. The same applies to all other ordeals. So - twenty passions, twenty exams for sins.
In very vivid, earthly concepts and expressions it is written about the ordeals in the life of St. Basil the New, where Blessed Theodora talks about what happened to her beyond the boundaries of earthly life. And reading her story, you involuntarily remember the wonderful words of the angel: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” Blessed Theodora saw monsters there, lakes of fire, and terrible faces, heard terrible screams, and observed the torment to which sinful souls were subjected. All these are “earthly things.” In reality, as the angel warned us, this is only a “weak image,” a weak semblance of those completely spiritual (and in this sense, “heavenly”) events that happen to a soul that is unable to reject passions. Everything is wrong there!
But why, in this case, is it shown this way? The reason is that there are no other means to warn a person still living about the suffering that awaits everyone who tramples on conscience and truth. For example, how to explain the effect of radiation to a person who has no idea about it and does not understand its destructive effect on the body? Apparently, it would be necessary to say that terrible invisible rays emanate from this place; a pagan would be more likely to understand if he was warned that evil spirits live here, or, on the contrary, this place is sacred and should not be approached...
- Do you understand, man?
- Got it.
What did he understand? Not what radiation is, not how it works, but most importantly: there is a serious danger here, you need to be extremely careful. So it is with paintings of ordeals. Yes, there is suffering, and it is caused by an unrighteous lifestyle.
But Blessed Theodora also speaks about demons who torment the soul for sins.
Uniting with the Spirit of God or with tormenting demons
Entire iconographic cycles were created based on the life of St. Theodora. Perhaps many have seen books with pictures depicting various tortures at ordeals. The artists' imagination is very strong and vivid, and therefore these pictures are impressive. When you look, what is not happening there: what torment, torture! And there really is torment there, but it is of a completely different nature. This is important to know, because it is of great importance for understanding the afterlife of all people, including non-Christians.
So, we come to the question of the action of demons on the soul in the afterlife. A very interesting thought on this issue was expressed by Saint Theophan the Recluse (Govorov) in his interpretation of the 80th verse of the 118th Psalm (“Be my heart blameless in your justification, so that I will not be ashamed”). This is how he explains the last words: “The second moment of non-shame is the time of death and the passage of ordeals. No matter how wild the thought of ordeals may seem to smart people, they cannot be avoided. What are these Mytniks looking for in those passing by? Whether they have their goods. What is their product? Passion. Therefore, whoever has an immaculate heart and is free from passions, they cannot find anything to which they could become attached; on the contrary, the quality opposite to them will strike them themselves like lightning arrows. To this, one of the little learned people expressed another thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively and charmingly, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, during earthly life, passions are expelled from the heart and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her. This means that it is very doubtful that the soul, while it still has sympathies for the objects of any passions, will not be ashamed at the ordeal. The shame here is that the soul itself is thrown into hell.”
Thought of St. Theophan follows the instructions of St. Anthony the Great. I will also quote his wonderful words: “God is good and impassive and unchanging. If anyone, recognizing that it is blessed and true that God does not change, is nevertheless perplexed as to how He (being such) rejoices over the good, turns away from the evil, is angry at sinners, and when they repent, is merciful to them; then to this it must be said that God does not rejoice and is not angry: for joy and anger are passions. It is absurd to think that the Divine would be good or bad because of human affairs. God is good and does only good things, but does not harm anyone, being always the same; and when we are good, we enter into communication with God, out of similarity with Him, and when we become evil, we separate from God, out of dissimilarity with Him. Living virtuously, we become God's, and when we become evil, we become rejected from him; and this does not mean that He has anger against us, but that our sins do not allow God to shine in us, but unite us with demons tormentors. If we then gain permission from our sins through prayers of good deeds, this does not mean that we have pleased God and changed Him, but that through such actions and our turning to God, having healed the evil that exists in us, we again become capable of tasting God’s goodness; so to say: God turns away from the wicked is the same as saying: the sun is hidden from those deprived of sight.”
In short, when we lead a correct (i.e. righteous) life, live according to the commandments and repent of violating them, then our spirit unites with the Spirit of God, and good things happen to us. When we act against our conscience and violate the commandments, our spirit becomes one with the tormenting demons, and thus we fall into their power. And according to the degree of our voluntary consent to sin, our voluntary submission to their power, they torment us. And if there is still repentance on earth, then it is already too late. But it turns out that it is not God who punishes us for our sins, but we ourselves, through our passions, give ourselves into the hands of tormentors. And their “work” begins - they are a kind of predators or sewer trucks that cleanse the environment of sewage. This is what happens to the soul after death at the ordeal.
The ordeal, therefore, is essentially nothing more than a kind of test of a person’s passions. Here a person shows himself - who he is, what he strived for, what he wanted. But they are not only a test - they are also a guarantee of the possible purification of the soul through the prayers of the Church.
“Passion a thousand times stronger than on earth...”
But, apparently, it is necessary to say once again what it is passion. We know about sin: for example, a person deceived, stumbled, this happens to everyone. Passion is something else - something that already pulls towards itself, and sometimes so irresistibly that a person cannot cope with himself. Although he understands perfectly well that this is bad, that it is bad, that it is harmful not only for the soul (although he most often forgets about the soul), but also for the body, he cannot cope with himself. In the face of conscience, in the face, if you like, of one’s own good, he cannot cope! This state is referred to as passion.
Passion is a truly terrible thing. Look what people do in the madness of passion, in the slavery of passion. They kill, maim, betray each other.
The Slavic word “passion” means, first of all, suffering, as well as a strong desire for something forbidden, sinful - that is, ultimately, also suffering. Passions are suffering. Christianity warns that all passions, being sinful, bring suffering to a person, and only suffering. Passion is a deception, it is a drug, it is a delight! After death, the real action of passions, their real cruelty, is revealed.
All our sins are committed when the soul is united with the body. A soul without a body can neither do good nor sin. The Fathers definitely say that the seat of passions is the soul, and not the body. The roots of passions are not in the body, but in the soul. Even the grossest bodily passions are rooted in the soul. That is why they do not go out, do not disappear with the death of the body. With them a person leaves this world.
How do these unresolved passions manifest themselves in that world? I will quote the thought of Abbot Nikon (Vorobyov): “Pasions a thousand times stronger than on earth will burn you like fire without any possibility of quenching them.” This is extremely serious.
Here on earth it is easier with our passions. So, I fell asleep - and all my passions fell asleep. For example, I get so angry at someone that I’m ready to tear him to pieces. But time passed and the passion gradually subsided. And soon they became friends. Here you can fight vices. In addition, passions are covered up by our physicality and therefore do not act in full force - or rather, rarely and, as a rule, they do not act this way for very long. But there a person, freed from physicality, finds himself confronted with their full action. Complete! Nothing interferes with their manifestation, the body does not close them, no sleep distracts them, no fatigue extinguishes them! In a word - continuous suffering, since the person himself does not have “any opportunity to satisfy them”! Plus, demons seduce us and then inflame and multiply the effect of our passions.
I was told how during World War II, after the Leningrad blockade was lifted, a woman ran up to a huge line for bread in the rear and hysterically shouted: “I’m from Leningrad.” Everyone immediately parted when they saw her crazy eyes, her terrible state. This is what only one passion is. Passion is a serious illness, the cure of which requires a lot of work and a long time. That is why it is so dangerous not to fight sin - often repeated, it turns into passion, and then real trouble comes not only in this life, but, what is a thousand times worse, in the next. And when a person has a whole bunch of passions? What will happen to him in Eternity?! If only this one thought were deeply rooted in us, we would, without a doubt, begin to approach our lives completely differently.
That is why Christianity, as a religion of love, reminds us: remember, man, you are not a mortal, but an immortal being, and therefore prepare for immortality. And the great happiness of Christians is that they know about this and can prepare. On the contrary, what horror does the unbeliever and the ignorant face after death!
Twenty ordeals reveal the state of a person’s soul, they are nothing more than twenty kind of litmus tests, twenty, if you like, exams, at which all its spiritual content is revealed and its fate is determined. True, it is not yet final. There will be more prayers from the Church, there will be a Last Judgment.
Like connects with like. The Power of Repentance
Each stage of ordeal is a test of the strength of the rootedness of a certain passion in a person, when its full strength is revealed. The one who did not fight passion, who obeyed it, who lived this passion, cultivated it, gave all the strength of his soul to its cultivation - falls, breaks down in this ordeal. And this - either a fall or going through an ordeal - is no longer determined by the effort of a person’s will, but by the action of the spiritual state prevailing in him. Abbess Arsenia, one of the remarkable ascetics at the turn of the 20th century (1905), wrote: “When a person lives an earthly life, he cannot know how enslaved his spirit is, depending on another spirit, he cannot fully know this because he has a will with which he acts as he pleases. But when the will is taken away with death, then the soul will see to whose power it is enslaved. The Spirit of God brings the righteous into eternal abodes, enlightening them, illuminating them, idolizing them. The same souls who had communion with the devil will be possessed by it.”
In other words, if we on earth do not fight small temptations, do not resist their pressure, then we thereby weaken our will and gradually destroy it. And there, in the face of a 1000-fold greater power of passion, our will will be taken away altogether, and the soul will be in the power of the tormenting demon. It is this last point that I would like to say again.
If we turn to the description of the ordeals, we find the spirits of evil present there everywhere – in different forms. Blessed Theodora even describes the appearance of some of them, although it is clear that these are only weak semblances of their true essence. The most serious thing - we have already emphasized this - is that, as Anthony the Great writes, the soul, submitted to passion, unites there with tormenting demons. And this happens, so to speak, naturally, for like always connects with like. In the conditions of earthly life, we also unite with people of the same spirit. Sometimes they wonder - how did these people get together? Then, upon closer acquaintance, it turns out: they have the same spirit! They are unanimous. A single spirit united them.
When the soul goes through ordeals, it is tested by the passion of each ordeal, by its spirits, tormenting demons, and, according to its state, it is either torn away from them or united with them, falling into the most severe suffering.
There is another side to this suffering. That world is a world of true light, in which all our sins will be revealed to everyone; in the face of all friends, acquaintances, and relatives, everything that is crafty, base, and unscrupulous will suddenly be revealed. Just imagine such a picture! That is why the Church calls everyone to prompt repentance. Repentance in Greek is metanoia, that is, a change of mind, way of thinking, a change in the goals of one’s life, aspirations. Repentance also means hatred of sin, aversion to it.
This is how wonderfully St. speaks about this. Isaac the Syrian: “Because God knew by His merciful knowledge that if absolute righteousness were required of people, then only one in ten thousand would be found who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, He gave them a medicine suitable for everyone, repentance, so that everyone every day and at every moment there was available to them a means of correction through the power of this medicine and that through contrition they would wash themselves at all times from any defilement that might happen, and be renewed every day through repentance.”
What does true repentance give? Take Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Look: he was ready to go to hard labor, even to go with joy, just to atone for his evil, to return to his previous state of soul. This is what repentance is: it really is a change of the soul, its salvation.
And even a small striving for good and repentance for evil can become the drop that tips the scales towards God. This drop, or, as Barsanuphius the Great said, this “copper obol”, quite insignificant, becomes the guarantee that the Lord unites with such a soul and defeats the evil that is present in it.
This is the enormous significance of sincere repentance and sincere struggle in this life of ours. They become the key to saving the passage of ordeals.
We Christians must be infinitely grateful to God for the fact that He revealed to us in advance the posthumous secret of the ordeals, so that here we would struggle with our bad inclinations, fight and repent. For if, I repeat, a person has even a small germ of such a struggle, if there is at least some compulsion to live according to the Gospel, then the Lord Himself will fill in what is missing and free us from the hands of destroying demons. The word of Christ is true: “You have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things; enter into the joy of your Master” (Matthew 25:23).
Christianity provides the greatest means of human salvation - repentance. The Lord wants us not to suffer here, and especially after death. Therefore, the Church calls: man, before it’s too late, take care of yourself...
We are free to do good and evil
Why, when talking about a person’s posthumous path, do we constantly emphasize that it is a test of the soul - first for good, and then for evil? Why the test?
Because God, in the very creation of man, gave him His image, which presupposes such freedom that God Himself cannot touch. For He needs free individuals, not slaves. Salvation is His free election, out of love for truth, holiness and beauty, and not for the sake of “spiritual” pleasures or the threat of punishment.
Why did God humble himself to the point of the cross, and not appear to the world as an all-powerful, wisest, invincible king? Why did He come to people not as a patriarch, not a bishop, not a theologian, not a philosopher, not a Pharisee, but as a beggar, homeless, from an earthly point of view, the last person who does not have a single external advantage over any person? The reason for this is obvious: power, power, external splendor, glory would certainly captivate the whole world, everyone would slavishly worship Him and “accept” His teaching in order to receive as much as possible... bread and circuses. Christ wanted nothing but the truth to attract a person to Him, nothing external to replace it, not to stand in the way of its acceptance. It is no coincidence that the Lord uttered such meaningful words: “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth; everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). External effects are idols that throughout human history have been trying to replace God.
Unfortunately, much of church life has followed the path of external, so-called “church” splendor, or rather purely worldly splendor. This brings to mind the words of one American Protestant, who, not only without hesitation, but, on the contrary, proudly shared: “In our church, everything should be entertaining in order to attract people.” And the spiritual law is known: the more outside, the less inside. Even at the beginning of the 16th century, the Monk Nilus of Sorsky tried to defend non-covetousness in monasticism, spoke out against all luxury, wealth and estates in the Church as degrading and unnatural, but his voice was not accepted, or rather, was rejected - the process of secularization of Christian consciousness turned out to be irreversible. And it is quite obvious that it led to the split of the 17th century, Peter I, the October Revolution, and at the end of the 20th century - to the so-called “perestroika”. And it will lead to even worse. For the Church is the “leaven” of society, and its spiritual state determines the internal and external well-being of the people.
St. Philaret of Moscow in the 19th century said with bitterness: “How boring it is to see that monasteries all want pilgrims, that is, they themselves seek entertainment and temptation. True, sometimes they lack methods, but what they lack more is non-covetousness, simplicity, hope in the Gods, and a taste for silence.” And he: “If war had to be declared on any clothing, then, in my opinion, not on the hats of priestly wives, but on the magnificent robes of bishops and priests. At least this is the first thing, but this was forgotten. “Let your priests, O Lord, be clothed with righteousness.” Perhaps even now there will be a saint who will say similar things about modern church life.
So the Lord, with his coming, showed that he is not only the greatest Love; but also the greatest Humility, and He cannot exert any, even the slightest, pressure on human freedom, therefore salvation is possible for everyone who freely accepts God and responds to Love with love. From here it becomes clear why earthly living conditions are so important. Only while in the body is a person fully human and can do good or evil, sin, break the commandments, or repent and lead a righteous life. Our freedom, our choice, is exercised on earth. After death there is no longer a choice, but the choice made on earth is realized, and the fruits of earthly life are revealed. The soul simply finds itself faced with the result of all human earthly activities. Therefore, there, in another world, a person is already powerless to change himself - he can only be helped. But more on that later.
On this day, one might say, the initial outcome of life is summed up. 40th day, if you like, is the first gathering of the fruits of a person’s earthly life. The Church teaches that the soul presents itself to the throne of God, before which God’s determination about man takes place. But it would also be correct to say: man’s self-determination occurs in the face of God. After all, God does not commit any violence against any person. God is the greatest, ultimate Love and Humility. Therefore, when on the 40th day the soul comes before God in some special way, then, apparently, here its spiritual state is fully revealed to it and its natural union occurs either with the Spirit of God or with the spirits of tormenting passions. This is what the Church calls private court, a private definition of personality.
Only this judgment is unusual - it is not God who judges and condemns man, but man, finding himself in the face of the Divine shrine, either ascends to Him, or, on the contrary, falls into the abyss. And all this no longer depends on his will, but on that spiritual state that was the result of his entire earthly life.
However, God’s determination on the 40th day, according to the teachings of the Church, is still not the last judgment. There will be another and final one, it is called the Last Judgment. On it, the fate of many, many people, through the prayers of the Church, will change.
From the book “The Afterlife of the Soul”
Ordeals are obstacles through which every soul must go through upon separation from the body on the way to the throne of God for private judgment; this is a test (conviction of sins) of the soul carried out in the air by evil spirits. The ordeal takes place on the third day after death.Two angels lead the soul along this path. Each of the ordeals is controlled by demons - unclean spirits who try to take the soul going through the ordeal to hell. Demons provide a list of sins related to a given ordeal (a list of lies at the ordeal of lies, etc.), and angels provide good deeds committed by the soul during life.
There are 20 ordeals in total:
1. idle talk and foul language
2. lies
3. condemnation and slander
4. binge eating and drunkenness
5. laziness
6. theft
7. love of money and stinginess
8. covetousness
9. untruths and vanity
10. envy
11. pride
12. anger
13. rancor
14. robbery
15. sorcery, charm, poisoning with herbs, summoning demons
16. fornication
17. adultery
18. sins of sodom
19. idolatry and all kinds of heresies
20. unmerciful and hard-hearted
1. Trials
St. Theophan the Recluse explains the spiritual meaning of ordeals:"What ordeal? - This is the image of a private death court, in which the entire life of the dying person is reviewed with all sins and good deeds. Sins are recognized as atoned for by opposite good deeds or corresponding repentance.
Find "Cheti-Minei month March". There, on the 26th, the passage of the ordeals of St. Elder Theodora is described. - All unjustified sinners who die in life undergo ordeal. Only perfect Christians do not linger at ordeals, but ascend straight to heaven like a bright streak."
Saint John (Maximovich):
“The soul...continues to live, without ceasing its existence for a single moment. Through many manifestations of the dead we have been given partial knowledge of what happens to the soul when it leaves the body. When vision with the physical eyes ceases, spiritual vision begins.
...on leaving the body the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually she is drawn to those who are closer to her in spirit, and if, while in the body, she was influenced by some of them, then she will remain dependent on them even after leaving the body, no matter how disgusting they turned out to be upon meeting.
During the first two days the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit those places on earth that are dear to it, but on the third day it moves to other spheres. At this time (on the third day) the soul passes through legions of evil spirits who block its path and accuse it of various sins into which they themselves have drawn it.
According to various revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called “ordeals,” at each of which one or another sin is tortured; Having gone through one ordeal, the soul comes to the next. And only after successfully passing through all of them can the soul continue its journey without being immediately thrown into Gehenna.
How terrible these demons and ordeals are can be seen from the fact that the Mother of God Herself, when Archangel Gabriel informed Her of the approach of death, prayed to His Son to deliver Her soul from these demons, and in response to Her prayers the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from Heaven accept the soul of His Most Pure Mother and take Her to Heaven. (This is visibly depicted on the traditional Orthodox icon of the Assumption.) The third day is truly terrible for the soul of the deceased, and for this reason it especially needs prayers".
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) writes:
“After the soul separates from the body, independent life begins for it in the invisible world. The spiritual experience accumulated by the Church makes it possible to construct a clear and harmonious teaching about the afterlife of man.
Student Venerable Macarius of Alexandria(+ 395) says: “When we walked through the desert, I saw two angels who accompanied St. Macarius, one on the right side, the other on the left.” One of them talked about what the soul does in the first 40 days after death: “when on the third day there is an offering in the Church, the soul of the deceased receives from the angel guarding it relief from the grief that it feels from separation from the body; receives because praise and offerings in the Church of God have been made for her, which is why good hope is born in her. For for two days the soul, together with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk on the earth wherever it wants. Therefore, the soul that loves the body sometimes wanders around the house in which it was separated from the body, sometimes around the coffin in which the body is laid... And the virtuous soul goes to those places in which it used to do the truth. On the third day, He who rose from the dead on the third day - the God of all - commands, in imitation of His Resurrection, every Christian soul to ascend to heaven to worship the God of all. So, the good Church is in the habit of making an offering and prayer for the soul on the third day. ... The great ascetic of our time St. John (Maksimovich) writes: “It should be borne in mind that the description of the first two days after death gives a general rule, which in no case covers all situations... the saints, who were not at all attached to worldly things, lived in constant anticipation of the transition to another world, not are drawn even to places where they did good deeds, but immediately begin their ascent to heaven.”
The Orthodox Church attaches great importance to the doctrine of aerial ordeals, which begin on the third day after the separation of the soul from the body. She passes through the airspace of the “outpost”, where evil spirits accuse her of her sins and strive to keep her as one akin to them. The holy fathers write about this (Ephraim the Syrian, Athanasius the Great, Macarius the Great, John Chrysostom, etc.). The soul of a man who lived according to the commandments of God and the statutes of St. The church passes through these “outposts” painlessly and after the fortieth day receives a temporary resting place. It is necessary for loved ones to pray in Church and at home for the departed, remembering that until the Last Judgment much depends on these prayers.“Truly, truly, I say to you, the time is coming, and has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live” (John 5:25).”
Monk Mitrofan writes in his book “Afterlife”:
“The immeasurable space between heaven and earth, or between the triumphant and militant Churches, this space is in ordinary spoken human language, and in St. In the Scriptures, and in the writings of the Holy Fathers, it is called air. So, here air is not called the subtle ethereal substance surrounding the earth, but space itself.
This space is filled with rejected, fallen angels, whose entire activity is to deviate a person from salvation, making him an instrument of untruth. They cunningly and hostilely act on our internal and external activities in order to make us accomplices of their destruction: “Seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8), - Apostle Peter testifies about the devil. That the air space is the dwelling place of evil spirits is evidenced by the chosen vessels of the Holy Spirit, and we believe this truth.
From the very moment that followed the fall of our first parents and the expulsion of sweets from paradise, the Cherub was placed at the tree of life (Gen. 3:24), but another, fallen angel, in turn, stood on the way to paradise in order to prevent man from entering . The gates of heaven were closed for man, and the prince of the world from that time on did not allow a single human soul separated from the body to enter heaven.
Both the righteous, except Elijah and Enoch, and sinners descended to hell.
The first to harmlessly pass this impassable path to paradise was the Conqueror of Death, the Destroyer of Hell; and the doors of heaven opened from that time. The prudent thief followed the Lord harmlessly, and all the Old Testament righteous people, the saints brought out of hell by the Lord, walk this path harmlessly, or, if they sometimes suffer demonic stops, then their virtues outweigh their falls.
If we, being already enlightened by the light of Christ and having free will to do right or wrong, constantly become their captives, doers of unrighteousness, executors of their vile will, then much less will they leave the soul when it is separated from the body and must go to God through air space.
Of course, they will present to the soul all the rights to own it, as a faithful executor of their suggestions, thoughts, desires and feelings.
Demons present her sinful activity in its entirety, and the soul realizes the justice of this testimony.
If the soul has not recognized itself, has not fully recognized itself here on earth, then, as a spiritual and moral being, it must, of necessity, recognize itself beyond the grave; to realize what she had developed in herself, what she had adapted to, what sphere she was accustomed to, what constituted food and pleasure for her. To recognize oneself and thus pronounce judgment on oneself, before God’s judgment - this is what heavenly justice wants. Behind the coffin, in order to bring the soul to the consciousness of its sinfulness, there are fallen spirits who, being the teachers of all evil on earth, will now present the soul with its sinful activity, and will recall all the circumstances under which evil was committed. The soul realizes its sins. By this she already warns God’s judgment over her; so that the judgment of God, as it were, already determines what the soul itself has pronounced over itself.
Good angels at ordeals, for their part, represent the good deeds of the soul.”
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that ordeals are execution of God's justice over the soul, carried out through the mediation of angels, both holy and evil, so that the soul itself knows itself:
“All who have clearly rejected the Redeemer are henceforth the property of Satan: their souls, upon separation from their bodies, descend straight to hell. But even Christians who deviate towards sin are not worthy of immediate relocation from earthly life to blissful eternity. Justice itself demands that these deviations to sin, these betrayals of the Redeemer be weighed and evaluated. Trial and analysis are necessary to determine the degree of deviation towards sin of the Christian soul, in order to determine what prevails in it - eternal life or eternal death. And every Christian soul, upon its departure from the body, awaits the impartial Judgment of God, as the holy Apostle Paul said: “it lies for man alone to die, and then comes the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).
The justice of God executes judgment on Christian souls who have departed from their bodies, through angels, both holy and evil. The former, during a person’s earthly life, notice all his good deeds, and the latter notice all his crimes. When the soul of a Christian begins to ascend to heaven, guided by the holy Angels, dark spirits expose it with its sins unerased by repentance, as victims to Satan, as guarantees of communication and the same eternal fate with him.
To torture souls passing through the airspace, the dark authorities have installed separate courts and guards in remarkable order. Along the layers of heaven, from the earth to the sky itself, there are guard regiments of fallen spirits. Each department is in charge of a special type of sin and torments the soul in it when the soul reaches this department. The aerial demonic guards and judgment seats are called “ordeals” in the patristic writings, and the spirits serving in them are called “publicans.”
In the time of Christ and in the first centuries of the Christian Church, the collector of state duties was called a publican. Since this duty, according to the simplicity of ancient customs, was entrusted to a person without positive responsibility and accountability, the tax collectors allowed themselves all means of violence, various kinds of tricks, fault-finding, countless abuses and inhuman robbery. They usually stood at city gates, in markets and other public places, so that no one could escape their watchful observation. The behavior of the tax collectors made them a terror to the people. According to his concept, the name of the publican expressed a person without feelings, without rules, capable of any crime, of any humiliating act, breathing, living by them - a rejected person. In this sense, the Lord compared the stubborn and desperate disobedient of the Church with a pagan and a tax collector (Matthew 18:17). For the Old Testament worshipers of the true God, nothing was more disgusting than a servant of idols: the publican was just as hateful to them. The name publicans spread from people to the demons who guard the sunrise from earth to heaven, due to the similarity of the office and its performance. As sons and confidants of lies, demons convict human souls not only of the sins they have committed, but also of those they have never been subjected to. They resort to fabrications and deceptions, combining slander with shamelessness and arrogance, in order to snatch the soul from the hands of angels and multiply with it countless prisoners of hell.”
On the way to heaven the soul meets first ordeal, on which evil spirits, having stopped the soul, accompanied by good angels, present to it its sins in words (much verbosity, idle talk, idle talk, foul language, ridicule, blasphemy, singing songs and passionate hymns, disorderly exclamations, laughter, laughter, etc.).
The second ordeal - lies(any lie, perjury, excessive invocation of the name of God, failure to fulfill vows given to God, concealing sins before the confessor in confession).
The third ordeal - slander(slander of a neighbor, condemnation, destruction, dishonoring him, cursing, ridicule while forgetting one’s own sins and shortcomings, with inattention to them).
The fourth ordeal is gluttony(overeating, drunkenness, eating without prayer, breaking fasts, voluptuousness, satiety, feasting, in a word - all types of pleasing the belly). The fifth ordeal is laziness (laziness and negligence in serving God, abandonment of prayer, parasitism, mercenaries who perform their duties with negligence).
The sixth ordeal is theft(all kinds of kidnapping - gross and specious, open and secret).
The seventh ordeal is love of money and stinginess.
Eighth - usurers (usurers, extortionists and appropriators of others' property).
The ninth ordeal - untruths(unrighteous: judgment, measure, weight and all other untruths).
The tenth ordeal is envy.
Eleventh ordeal - pride(pride, vanity, conceit, self-aggrandizement, failure to give due honor to parents, spiritual and civil authorities, disobedience to them and disobedience to them).
Twelfth - rage and anger.
Thirteenth - rancor.
Fourteenth - murders.
Fifteenth - magic(witchcraft, seduction, poisoning, slander, whispers, enchantment summoning demons).
The sixteenth ordeal - prodigal(everything that relates to this defilement: thoughts, desires and deeds themselves; fornication of persons not bound by the sacrament of marriage, pleasure in sin, voluptuous views, foul touches and touches).
Seventeenth - adultery(failure to maintain marital fidelity, prodigal falls of persons who have dedicated themselves to God).
Eighteenth ordeal - Sodom(unnatural prodigal sins and incest).
Nineteenth ordeal - heresies(false wisdom about faith, doubt in faith, apostasy from the Orthodox faith, blasphemy).
And finally, the last thing, twentieth ordeal - no mercy(unmercy and cruelty).
Wherein, if a Christian confessed his sin in confession and repented of it, then he will not be remembered at the ordeal. Through repentance, sins committed are destroyed and are no longer mentioned anywhere, neither at the ordeal, nor at the trial. In the life of St. Vasily Novy we read the question of Theodora, who was undergoing ordeal, and the answer to it:
“After this, I asked the Angels who accompanied me: “For every sin that a person commits in life, he is tortured in these ordeals, after death, or, perhaps, is it possible to atone for his sin in life in order to be cleansed of it and there is no more suffering for him here. I’m just in awe of how detailed everything goes.” The angels answered me that not everyone is tested like this in ordeals, but only those like me, who did not confess sincerely before death. If I had confessed to my spiritual father without any shame or fear everything sinful and if I had received forgiveness from my spiritual father, then I would have gone through all these ordeals without hindrance and I would not have had to be tortured for a single sin. But since I did not want to sincerely confess my sins to my spiritual father, here they torture me for this.
…Anyone who diligently strives for repentance always receives forgiveness from God, and through this a free transition from this life to the blissful life after death. Evil spirits who are in ordeals along with their scriptures, having opened them, do not find anything written, for the Holy Spirit makes everything written invisible. And they see this, and know that everything written down by them has been blotted out thanks to confession, and then they grieve greatly. If the person is still alive, then they try to write some other sins in this place again. Great, truly, is the salvation of a person in confession!.. It saves him from many troubles and misfortunes, makes it possible to go through all the ordeals without hindrance and get closer to God. Others do not confess in the hope that there will still be time for salvation and forgiveness of sins; others are simply ashamed to tell their confessor their sins in confession - these are the people who will be tested strictly in the ordeals.”
Blessed Diadochos This is how he writes about the need for special care in relation to our involuntary, sometimes unknown to us sins:
“If we do not confess them enough, then during our exodus we will find an indefinite fear in ourselves.” “And we, who love the Lord, should wish and pray that at that time we may be free from any fear: for whoever is then in fear will not pass freely past the princes of hell, because they consider the fearfulness of the soul to be a sign of its complicity in their evil, as it is in them themselves.”
Knowing the afterlife state of the soul, that is, the passage of ordeals and the appearance to God for worship, corresponding to the third day, the Church and relatives, wanting to prove that they remember and love the deceased, pray to the Lord for the harmless passage of the soul through air ordeals and for the forgiveness of its sins. The liberation of the soul from sins constitutes its resurrection for a blessed, eternal life. So, following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day, a memorial service is being served for the deceased, so that he too would be resurrected on the third day for an endless, glorious life with Christ.
2. Ordeals only reveal the state of a person’s soul that has already developed during earthly life
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):... Just as the resurrection of the Christian soul from sinful death takes place during its earthly wanderings, in exactly the same way it is mysteriously accomplished here on earth, its torture by the aerial authorities, its captivity by them or liberation from them; when moving through the air, this freedom and captivity are only revealed.”
Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets:
“Some are worried about when the Second Coming will be. However, for a dying person, the Second Coming, so to speak, is already coming. Because a person is judged according to the state in which death overtakes him.”
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):
The great saints of God, who have completely passed from the nature of the old Adam into the nature of the New Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, in this elegant and holy newness, with their honest souls, go through the airy demonic ordeals with extraordinary speed and great glory. They are carried to Heaven by the Holy Spirit...
Saint Theophan the Recluse in the interpretation of the 80th verse of the 118th Psalm (“Let my heart be blameless in thy justifications, lest I be put to shame”), he explains the last words as follows:
"The second moment of non-shame is the time of death and going through ordeals. No matter how wild the thought of ordeals may seem to wise men, they cannot be avoided. What are these toll-takers looking for in those passing through? Whether they have their goods. What is their goods? Passions. It has become It may be that those who have an immaculate heart and are free from passions will not be able to find anything to which they could become attached: on the contrary, the goodness that is opposite to them will strike them like lightning arrows.To this, one of the little learned expressed another thought: ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively charming, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, during earthly life, passions are expelled from the heart and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her. This means that it is very doubtful that the soul, while it still has sympathies for the objects of any passions, will not be ashamed at the ordeal. The shame here is that the soul itself is thrown into hell.".
3. The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church
His Eminence Macarius writes: " Continuous, constant and widespread use in the Church of the doctrine of ordeals, especially among teachers of the fourth century, indisputably testifies that it was transmitted to them from teachers of previous centuries and is based on the apostolic tradition” (Right. Dogma. Theology. Volume 5).St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):
The doctrine of ordeals is the teaching of the Church. “There is no doubt” that the holy Apostle Paul speaks of them when he proclaims that Christians are destined to wage war against the spirits of wickedness in high places. We find this teaching in the most ancient church Tradition and in church prayers. Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, notified by Archangel Gabriel of her approaching repose, brought tearful prayers to the Lord for the deliverance of Her soul from the evil spirits in heaven. When the very hour of Her honorable dormition had come, when the Son Himself and Her God descended to her with tens of angels and righteous spirits, She, before betraying Her most holy soul into the all-holy hands of Christ, uttered the following words in prayer to Him: “Receive now in My spirit in the world and protect Me from the dark region, so that no aspiration of Satan meets Me.”
Saint Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria, in the biography of St. Anthony the Great, narrates the following:
“One day he (Antony), at the approach of the ninth hour, having begun to pray before eating food, was suddenly caught up in the Spirit and lifted up by the Angels to a height. The air demons opposed his procession; The angels, arguing with them, demanded an explanation of the reasons for their opposition, because Anthony had no sins. The demons tried to expose the sins he had committed since birth; but the Angels stopped the mouths of the slanderers, telling them that they should not count his sins from birth, already blotted out by the grace of Christ, but let them present, if they have, the sins he committed after the time he dedicated himself to God by entering monasticism. When accusing the demons, they uttered many blatant lies; but since their slander was devoid of evidence, a free path opened for Anthony. He immediately came to his senses and saw that he was standing in the very place where he stood for prayer. Forgetting about food, he spent the whole night in tears and lamentations, thinking about the multitude of human enemies, about the fight against such an army, about the difficulty of the path to heaven through the air and about the words of the Apostle, who said: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but to the beginning of the power of this air (Eph. 6:12), which, knowing that the powers of the air are only seeking this, are concerned about this with all their efforts, are straining and striving for this in order to deprive us of free passage to heaven, admonishes: “ take up all the weapons of God, that you may be able to resist in the day of cruelty" (Eph. 6:13), "so that the adversary may be put to shame, having nothing to say reproachfully against us" (Titus 2:8).
Saint John Chrysostom, having said that the dying person, even if he was a great ruler on earth, is overcome with confusion, fear, and bewilderment when he “sees the terrible angelic powers and the opposing forces that have come” to separate the soul from the body, he adds:
“Then we need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, great intercession from the Angels as we move through the air. If, when traveling to a foreign country or a foreign city, we need a guide, then how much more do we need guides and assistants to guide us past the invisible elders and authorities of the world rulers of this air, called persecutors, publicans, and tax collectors!
Venerable Macarius the Great speaks:
“Hearing that under the heavens there are rivers of serpents, mouths of lions, dark powers, a burning fire that throws all members into confusion, don’t you know that if you do not receive the pledge of the Holy Spirit when you leave the body, they will seize your soul and prevent you from entering heaven".
"When the human soul leaves the body, a great mystery takes place. For if she is guilty of sins, then hordes of demons come; evil angels and dark forces take this soul and drag it to their side. No one should be surprised by this. For if a person, while still alive, while still in this world, submitted, surrendered and enslaved him, then will they not possess him any more and enslave him when he leaves this world? As for the other, better part, it happens to them differently. That is, with the holy servants of God even in this life there are angels, holy spirits surround them and protect them. And when their souls are separated from their bodies, the faces of angels accept them into their society, into a bright life, and thus lead them to the Lord."
Venerable Ephraim the Syrian:
“When the sovereign forces approach, when terrible armies come, when the divine seizers command the soul to move from the body, when, dragging us by force, they take us to the inevitable judgment seat, then, seeing them, the poor man... everything begins to shake, as if from an earthquake, everyone trembles... The divine takers, having taken the soul, ascend through the air, where the rulers, powers and rulers of the world stand against the opposing forces... These are our evil accusers, terrible tax collectors, inventory clerks, tax collectors; they meet on the way, describe, examine and calculate sins and handwritings of this man, the sins of youth and old age, voluntary and involuntary, committed by deed, word, thought... There is great fear there, great trembling for the poor soul, indescribable need that she will then suffer from the countless number of darkness surrounding her enemies, slandering her so as not to give she must ascend to heaven, settle in the light of the living, enter the land of life. But the holy angels, having taken the soul, lead her away."
“Do you not know, my brethren, what fear and what suffering we are subjected to at the hour of departure from this life when the soul is separated from the body?.. Good Angels and the Heavenly Host approach the soul, as well as all... the opposing forces and princes of darkness. Both want to take the soul or assign it a place. If the soul acquired good qualities here, led an honest life and was virtuous, then on the day of its departure these virtues that it acquired here become good angels surrounding it and do not allow anyone to touch it. any opposing force. In joy and joy with the holy Angels they take it and carry it to Christ, the Lord and King of Glory, and worship Him together with it and with all the Heavenly Powers. Finally the soul is taken to a place of rest, to unspeakable joy, to eternal a light where there is no sorrow, no sighing, no tears, no worries, where there is immortal life and eternal joy in the Kingdom of Heaven with all others who pleased God.If the soul in this world lived shamefully, indulging in the passions of dishonor and being carried away by carnal pleasures and vanity of this world, then on the day of its departure, the passions and pleasures that it acquired in this life become wicked demons and surround the poor soul, and do not allow the Angels of God to approach it; but together with the opposing forces, the princes of darkness, they take her, pitiful, shedding tears, sad and lamenting, and take her to dark places, gloomy and sad, where sinners await the day of Judgment and eternal torment, when the devil and his angels will be cast down.”
The great saint of God, viewer of mysteries, Saint Niphon, Bishop of the Cyprus city of Constantius, standing one day in prayer, saw the heavens open and many Angels, some of whom descended to earth, others ascended to the mountain, lifting human souls to heavenly abodes. He began to listen to this spectacle, and behold, two Angels strived for heights, carrying their souls. When they approached the fornication ordeal, the demons came out and said with anger: “This soul is ours! How dare you carry it past us when it is ours?” The Angels answered: “On what basis do you call her yours?” - The demons said: “Until her death, she sinned, being defiled not only by natural, but also by supernatural sins, and she condemned her neighbor, and what’s worse, she died without repentance: what do you say to this?” - The angels answered: “Truly we will not believe either you or your father, Satan, until we ask the guardian angel of this soul.” The guardian angel asked said: “Exactly, this man has sinned a lot; but as soon as he became ill, he began to cry and confess his sins to God. Whether God has forgiven him, He knows. To Him is the power, To Him is glory to the righteous judgment.” Then the Angels, despising the accusation of demons, entered with their souls into the gates of heaven. - Then the Blessed One saw another soul lifted up by the Angels. The demons, running out to them, cried out: “Why are you carrying souls without our knowledge, like this gold-loving, prodigal, quarrelsome, practicing robbery?” The Angels answered: “We probably know that, although she fell into all this, she cried, sighed, confessing and giving alms, and therefore God granted her forgiveness.” The demons said: “If this soul is worthy of God’s mercy, then take the sinners of the whole world; We have no business working here.” The Angels answered them: “All sinners who confess their sins with humility and tears will accept forgiveness by the grace of God; those who die without repentance are judged by God.” Thus, having shamed the demons, they passed on. Again the Holy One saw the ascended soul of a certain God-loving, pure, merciful man, loving to all. The demons stood in the distance and gnashed their teeth at this soul; The angels of God came out to meet her from the gates of heaven and, greeting her, said: “Glory to Thee, Christ God, that Thou didst not deliver her into the hands of her enemies and delivered her from the depths of hell!” - Blessed Niphon also saw that demons were drawing a certain soul to hell. This was the soul of one slave, whom the master tormented with hunger and beatings and who, unable to bear the torment, hanged himself, having been taught by the devil. The guardian angel walked in the distance and wept bitterly; The demons rejoiced. And a command came from God to the weeping Angel to go to Rome, there to take custody of the newborn baby, who was being baptized at that time. - Again the Saint saw a soul carried through the air by Angels, which was taken from them by demons at the fourth ordeal and cast into the abyss. It was the soul of a man given over to fornication, sorcery and robbery, who died suddenly without repentance.
Venerable Isaiah the Hermit in his will, he commanded his disciples “to have death before our eyes every day and to worry about how to accomplish the exodus from the body and how to pass by the powers of darkness that are about to meet us in the air.”
Venerable Abba Dorotheos, a monastic student of the same hostel of Abba Serida, writes in one of his messages: “When the soul is insensitive (cruelty), it is useful to frequently read the Divine Scripture and the touching words of the God-bearing fathers, remembering the Last Judgment of God, the departure of the soul from the body, those who will meet her terrible powers, with the complicity of which she did evil in this short and disastrous life.
The doctrine of ordeals, like the doctrine of the location of heaven and hell, is found as a teaching that is well known and generally accepted throughout the entire area of worship of the Orthodox Church.».
