DISCOVERING GOD
It is evident that unbelief is an evil offspring of an evil heart;
for the guileless and pure heart everywhere discovers God,
everywhere discerns Him, and always unhesitatingly believes in His
existence. When the man of pure heart looks at the World of
Nature, that is, at the sky, the earth, and the sea and at all
things in them, and observes the systems constituting them, the infinite
multitude of stars of heaven, the innumerable multitudes of birds
and quadrupeds and every kind of animal of the earth, the
variety of plants on it, the abundance of fish in the sea, he is
immediately amazed and exclaims with the Prophet David: "How
great are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom Thou made them all." Such a
man, impelled by his pure heart, discovers God also in the
World of Grace of the Church, from which the evil man is far
removed. The man of pure heart believes in the Church, admires
her spiritual system, discovers God in the Mysteria, in the heights
of the theology, in the light of the Divine revelations, in the
truths of the teachings, in the commandments of the Law, in the
achievements of the Saints, in the very good deed, in every
perfect gift, and in general in the whole of the creation. Justly
then did the Lord say in His Beatitudes of those possessing purity of
the heart: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
He who does not know himself does not know God, either. And he who
does not know God does not know the truth and the
nature of things in general... He who does not know himself
continually sins against God and continually moves farther away from
Him. He who does not know the nature of things and what they truly
are in themselves is powerless to evaluate them according to
their worth and to discriminate between the mean and the precious,
the worthless and the valuable. Wherefore, such a person
wears himself out in the pursuit of vain and trivial things, and is
unconcerned about and indifferent to the things that are eternal
and most precious. Man ought to will to know himself, to know God, and to understand the nature of things as they are in themselves, and this
becomes an image and likeness of God.
MAN
Man is a composite being, made up of an earthly body and celestial
soul... The soul is closely united with the body, yet wholly
independent of it. Man is not only reason but also heart. The powers of these two centers,
mutually assisting one another, render man perfect and
teach him what he could never learn through reason alone. If reason
teaches about the natural world, the heart teaches us about
the supernatural world... Man is perfect when he has developed both
his heart and his intellect. Now the heart is developed
through revealed religion.
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
The rational soul of man has supernatural, infinite aspirations. If the
rational soul were dependent upon the body and died together
with the body, it should necessarily submit to the body and follow
it in all its appetites. Independence would have been contrary
both to the laws of nature and to reason, because it disturbs the
harmony between the body and the soul. As dependent upon the
body it should submit to the body and follow in all its appetites
and desires, whereas, on the contrary, the soul masters the body,
imposes its will upon the body. The soul subjugates and curbs the
appetites and passions of the body, and directs them as it (the
soul) wills. This phenomenon comes to the attention of every
rational man; and whoever is conscious of his own rational soul is
conscious of the souls's mastery over the body. The mastery of the soul over the body is proved by the obedience of
the body when it is being led with self-denial to sacrifice for
the sake of the abstract ideas of the soul. The domination by the
soul for prevalence of its principles, ideas, and views would have
been entirely incomprehensible if the soul died together with the
body. But a mortal soul would never have risen to such a height,
would never have condemned itself to death along with the body for
the prevalence of abstract ideas that lacked meaning, since no
noble idea, no noble and courageous thought has any meaning for a
mortal soul.
A soul, therefore, which is capable of such things,must be immortal.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
The Teachers of the Eastern Orthodox Church, having Holy Scripture
as their foundation, teach that those who die in the Lord go
to a place of rest, according to the statement in the Apocalypse:
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea,
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their
works do follow them" (Revelation 14:13). This place of rest is
viewed as spiritual Paradise, where the souls of those who have
died in the Lord, the souls of the righteous, enjoy the blessings of
rest, while awaiting the day of rewarding and the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus...About the sinners, they teach that their souls go down to Hades,
where there is suffering, sorrow, and groaning, awaiting the
dreadful day of the Judgment. The Fathers of the Orthodox Church do not admit the existence of another place, intermediate between Paradise and Hades, as
such a place is not mentioned in Holy Scripture. After the end of the General Judgment, the Righteous Judge (God)
will declare the decision both to the righteous and to the
sinners. To the righteous He will say: "Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world;" while to the sinners He will say: "Depart from me,
ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels." And these will go away to enternal hades, while the
righteous will go to enternal life. This retribution after the General
Judgment will be complete, final, and definitive. It will complete,
because it is not the soul alone, as the Partial Judgment of man
after death, but the soul together with the body, that will receive
what is deserved. It will be final, because it will be enduring and
not temporary like that at Partial Judgment. And it will be
definitive, because both for the righteous and for the sinners it will
be
unalterable and eternal.
SAINTS
Our Church honors saints not as gods, but as faithful servants, as holy
men and friends of God. It extols the struggles they engaged in and the
deeds they performed for the glory of God with the action of His grace,
in such a way that all the honor that the Church gives them refers to
the Supreme Being, Who has viewed their life on earth with
gratification. The Church honors them by commemorating them annually
through public celebrations and through the erection of Churches in
honor of their name.
The holy men of God, who were magnified on earth by the Lord, have been
honored by God's holy Church from the very time it was founded by the
Savior Christ.
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