The "Revelation" of the Evangelist John, the most poetic book of Holy Scripture with its deep and mysterious content, the book which in the most sublime way proclaims the comforting and joyful news of the victory of the Lamb of Christ over the Antichrist, represents death in the form of a rider on a "pale" horse, indicating the color of death. And this horseman, that is, death, with the sword, famine, and pestilence, takes away people's lives and sends them into the all-devouring jaws of hell, which follows the horseman to immediately receive the dead (Rev. 6:8) [8]. Sculpture and architecture with beautiful monuments, imposing mausoleums, huge pyramids – the tombs of the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt and other tombstones – in turn convey the feeling of this natural human fear when facing death.

The Greatest Mystery of the Wisdom of God

"If life is truly a continuously flowing river, then it has two natural limits. Man, on the other hand, inevitably following the course of the river called life, knows from experience one limit. He tries not to know about the other end and not even think about it." This makes the mystery of death even more mysterious and dark, since we all stand on the same edge of the grave. And the world that is on this side of the grave, that is, this world, is "the perishable world, the place of dying" [9]. The place of the truly living is the world beyond the grave, where there is neither night nor sleep – "the image of death" [10].

God is the creator of life. Therefore, the existence of death in creation by Divine will "fulfills the mystery of Divine wisdom. The eternal mind cannot be wholly immersed in this mystery, perceive it, and comprehend it. Therefore, "death is terrible and full of great terror" and is "the greatest mystery of God's wisdom" [12]. The Lord, with incomprehensible and incomprehensible wisdom for us, defines the boundaries of this life and transports us to another life, as the hymnographer of our Church exclaims St. Theophan the Inscribed († 843): "O Lord... by the depth of Thy ineffable wisdom, Thou didst determine life and foresaw death, and Thou didst bring man to another life" [13].

The mystery of death is all the more profound because no man is able to convey and describe the experience of his death. This very experience, an indispensable element in the study of any phenomenon, we acquire when... Die! But then it doesn't do us any good! No one can experience his own death as an event of his earthly existence. When a person experiences this event (and he experiences it only once, first and last), he immediately ceases to exist in this world. So death is, in fact, the realization of the impossibility of our existence in this world!

In this respect, no one can take away another person's death, that is, no one can prevent another from dying his own death, which God has ordained for him. I can die in the place of someone else; I can die for someone else, to save him from death. But this does not mean that I die the death of another. Everyone dies his own death. So man cannot perceive and, consequently, cannot objectively investigate the phenomenon of death as one of the stages of his presence in the world.

The mystery of death is all the more incomprehensible because a heavy and impenetrable veil of doubt and ignorance hides the hour of our death, the place where souls pass, and their way of life. "Where do souls go now? – asks St. Anastasius the Sinaite in one of his hymns († 599). "How are they there now?" They wish to know the mystery, but no one is pleased to tell it." And in another hymn he says that those who depart cannot return to tell us "how the brethren and grandchildren sometimes dwell, there they preceded the Lord. By the same multiplication we ever say: Is there food to see one another? Is there food there to see the brethren? Is there food together with the psalm?" [14]

These obvious questions, just a few of many, show how deep the mystery that envelops the problem of death is, if, of course, one tries to investigate it outside of Christian truth. These questions are natural, since at the time of death the usual ties between people are broken. The departing one is confronted with the stunning event of death. At all other moments of our life, someone can be next to us in order to relieve our pain, console us, support us. But when we find ourselves facing death and taking this great step, all bridges are burned! Those who remain on this side are confused, silent, depressed, and sometimes "more dead than the dead," as someone said in the funeral oration to a friend. And on the other side, on the other side, there is someone who has left this life and who is now in a completely different world..

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In one of the church hymns of St. Anastasius the Sinaite it is said: "What are the bitter words of the dying, brethren, which they proclaim, when they depart: brethren I part, I leave all my friends, and I depart; for we do not know: or how the imam is there, we do not know, but God who called me..." "When the soul is separated from the body, a terrible mystery [...] for the soul departs sorrowfully, but the body is covered with the earth" [15]. That is why St. John of Damascus exclaims in a mournful hymn: "I weep and weep, when I think of death and see in the graves lying in the graves our beauty, created in the image of God, ugly, inglorious, without form." Filled with deep feeling, he continues: "O miracle! What is this mystery about us? How shall we give ourselves over to corruption? How shall we be bound together with death?" [16]

Unbelievers and people of little faith run to sorcerers, soothsayers, mediums, and the like in order to get answers to questions, to find some consolation, or to learn something about their loved ones. We try to penetrate, as far as possible, into life beyond the grave, having Divine Revelation as our guide. For if any religion speaks in one way or another about this important subject, it is the Living God in the Trinity who nourishes and warms our Christian life with faith, hope and love, and especially with the hope instilled by the Lord's vows "for the future and for the last events" [17]. Let us, therefore, set out on our journey with a guide, the Holy Scriptures, with guides, the God-bearing Fathers, who interpreted it, being enlightened by the Holy Spirit the Comforter. At the same time, let us not forget that "the educational wisdom of the Church has always carefully tried to avoid a dogmatic synthesis that would exhaust eschatological views." Apart from the articles of the Holy Creed of our faith, which speak of the Second Coming, the coming Judgment and the Resurrection of the dead, Orthodoxy "does not offer such dogmatic regulations." We know that the sacrament of death, as well as other complex issues, "is treated with trepidation by theologians" [18]. And at the same time, as St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote, "... if wisdom properly belongs to the comprehension of the truth of beings, and prophecy contains in itself the clarification of the future, then he will not possess the full gift of wisdom who does not embrace the future with knowledge with the assistance of the gift of prophecy" [19].

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