Met Avgoustinos Kantiotes-A Homily on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

 

 Homily on the Fifth Sunday of Luke (The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus - Luke 16: 19-31), by Metropolitan Avgoustinos Kantiotes of Florina (+2010)

 

"Life beyond the Tomb"
Many things, my beloved, make man afraid. But that which frightens him more than anything is death. Even the word “death” alone brings trembling. Death is a great mystery!

Everyone, more or less, has the question: what happens after death? Is there anything beyond the tomb, or does life end there, and man is extinguished?

The question is an important one. If we believed that life ends in the tomb, then man would be free to do whatever he wishes: to sin, to fornicate, to commit adultery, to break the greatest rules, as long as he evades the eyes of the police and justice. If, however, there is life beyond the tomb, then man must count how he lives in this life, according to the voice of his conscience and the will of God.

To the question as to what is there after death, the answer is given us by today’s Gospel, the beautiful Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which you just heard. What does it tell us?

There was a rich man, who had all of the good things from God. But all of these (houses, fields, everything else), he used for himself alone. He was a selfish self-seeker, and a worshipper of the flesh. He had the best clothes, wore expensive outfits, which only kings would wear, and ate the best food and drank the best wine, and spend his days in his great home. There were people playing music every night there, and sinful women danced unethical dances. Thus he spent his life, “rejoicing radiantly every day” (Luke 16:19). He did not give meaning to anything else.

At his door lay Lazarus, a poor and sick man, alone and abandoned, whom no one gave even the shelter of a roof, or medicine, or any other human help. The rich man never opened his door to show him hospitality, and he tried to survive on the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich man. He was full of wounds, and the dogs licked his wounds. Thus he lived.

Saint Maximos The Confessor- Even After Death the Soul Retains Activity

The Seventh Letter of St. Maximos the Confessor

On How Even After Death the Soul Retains its Intellectual Activity, and in no Way Loses its Natural Power

To John the Presbyter,

On the second day of this August in the current first indiction, our mutual friend handed me the honorable letters sent by your fatherly holiness. Naturally, I was comforted to read that you are in good health; since after God, you, my master, are the cause of every good thing [in my life]. So much has the Holy Spirit of God united Himself to you, that even when you are absent I behold you with my mind’s eye alone. I order my life and my speech [or reason] using what strength I possess, because when I remember you, it is as if I am seeing God before me, and I am filled with reverence.

I was not a little disturbed to learn that the [heretical] doctrine concerning the soul is shamelessly being preached in your parts with the same support and boldness as it is here. In fact, I am filled with grief, and a weight has settled on my mind like a cloud, because this novel doctrine about [the state of the soul after] the resurrection is being advocated by almost everyone here, in particular by the supposedly most distinguished monks. One would not be far off if he supposed that this was the first sign of the coming of the Antichrist. Indeed, anyone who is able to reason should affirm this to be the case, since he has as a witness to the great evil the absurdity of the things they say.


These people shamelessly sharpen their tongues against everything, and do not consider anything irreverently said or done to be terrible. Thus they claim that after the resurrection bodies will continue to subsist by means of phlegm, blood, yellow and black bile, breathing, and tangible food. They say that in the resurrection, nothing will be different from this present life, except that no one will die again. I do not know how they can stop their ears and close the eyes of their souls so as not to understand everything written in Holy Scripture about the soul and the resurrection through the prophets and apostles, through the Word of God Himself speaking in the flesh, and especially through the divine Paul when he expounds on the resurrection to the Corinthians. These passages are crystal-clear and very well known. They do not require an exegete. Moreover the nature of reality itself, no less than the divine oracles, teaches about the resurrection and leads even barbarians to the knowledge of the truth. Nevertheless, [the heretics] feel no shame in ignoring these self-evident proofs.