In last Saturday's Otago Daily Times the column by Civis caught my attention. It was entitled 'Reluctance to accept death a normal part of life.' He was writing about the death of a German tourist, aged seventy-five, while he was walking the Tongariro Crossing with his son. As one of those who were with him when he died said, "This man had the most beautiful death he could wish: doing what he loves with his son in a place of breath-taking beauty and without suffering." I could not agree more, especially as the man himself was already suffering from cancer, and according to his son, "very, very sick".
Civis took to task those who subsequently called for emergency defibrillators to be installed on the Tongariro Crossing at vast expense, believing that it would be virtually impossible to make use of any one of them before it was far too late to help anybody in the same dire straights as the German tourist. He also questioned the use of such phrases as 'passed away' instead of 'died' as being merely cosmetic, rather like the funeral home proprietor who took the bereaved into his viewing suite with the words, 'Mother will see you now.'
Although I would claim that I had become a believer in Orthodox teaching about death long before I became a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, I must nevertheless confess that the Orthodox tradition concerning death and burial did come as something of a shock as soon as I experienced it being put into practice.
You are not spared the realities. The body lies in an open coffin. When I asked someone how this went down in a hot Greek summer, I was told that this was where the use of incense could bring a certain relief to the mourners, since embalming is not always possible! At the end of the funeral, after olive oil from the church lamps, along with ashes from the censer, are poured over the body, the mourners are invited to come forward for one last kiss before the actual burial. And burial it will be. Cremation is most definitely not thought appropriate or even permissible except in exceptional circumstances.
And then there is the text of the service itself which is almost like a little play in which the body speaks on behalf of all humankind: 'O thou who of old didst honour me with thy divine image, but because I transgressed thy commandments hast returned me to the earth from which I was taken; bring me back to that likeness to be reshaped in that pristine beauty.' And this: 'I am an image of thine ineffable glory, though I bear the wounds of my sins. Show thy compassion on thy creature, O Lord, and purify me by thy loving-kindness; and grant unto me the home-country of my heart's desire, making me again a citizen of paradise.'
This rather strange appeal (to western ears) goes to the heart of the matter for the Orthodox. The loss of the body has come about because in some sense the Creation has fallen away from God (who is the source of life and of existence itself) but it can be, and will be, reversed when God so decides. And this applies to the whole of creation from galaxies to blades of grass, and especially to conscious beings, all of which survive into the world to come, and all of which will be completely and gloriously restored in God's good time. One can only hope that female praying mantises will have improved their dining habits by then!
St Gregory of Nyssa (the Father of Fathers, a General Council called him) claimed that eternity is in reality a time of constant growth, change, and improvement without end. God, he said, is infinite, and therefore there is no end to his wisdom, beauty, knowledge, goodness etc. etc. And what that means for his creatures is increasing happiness and joy for ever and ever. Not to mention a total absence of boredom!
And this involves the complete restoration of us all. Nobody is claiming that your old arthritic knees will be returned to you in all their agonising glory, and anyway our bodies get a make-over about every seven years in any case. But our identity will be restored in new and shining (and lasting!) form. My knees are looking forward very much to that. Me too.
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