Let us not, brethren, test the unsearchable destinies of God: "Thy (the Lord's) destiny is a great abyss" (Ps. 35; 7), "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and rule Thy judgments!" (Psalm 118; 137). One thing we need to remember is that Almighty God arranges everything wisely for our benefit, and if He did not destroy death on earth, then He thereby showed us a great blessing.

In the first place, He forsook bodily death, that men might turn away from sin and abhor it. Death is the daughter of sin; it was born of sin, as the Divine Scripture says: "Lust begets sin, but sin that is committed brings forth death" (James 1:15). Such is the unfortunate genealogy of death! This is its origin! As the father is sin, so is the daughter death: by their fruits you will know them! Thou dost not see, O man, the abomination of sin: look at death, look at the stinking corpse, and from the vile daughter, death, know her vile father — sin! If such an unbearable stench emanates from a dead man of two or three days that everyone tries to get away from him, incense incense, and incense, what will happen to this corpse in the grave in a few more days? My God, what fear and horror, what stench and abomination.. But sin has done all this: death has entered into sin, and by the fruits of sin know it! When God allows pestilence and pestilence to come upon a city, there are so many disasters, grief and sorrow! People shun each other and, in spite of this, die suddenly; everyone leaves the dying, and the dead are carelessly thrown into a common pit... And all this is done by sin: death entered through sin — oh, how unspeakably abominable this sin is.. When the forefather Jacob saw the bloody clothes of his beloved son Joseph, he exclaimed: "A fierce beast has torn him to pieces, a fierce beast has devoured my Joseph...!"

Secondly, Christ left bodily death on earth, so that people would not cling with their hearts to worldly pleasures and bodily beauty. Oh, how often this beauty wounds the human heart! But look at what it turns into then? Into a stinking corpse, no more... That is why St. Ephraim the Syrian gives the following advice: "When the fire of carnal lust burns in your heart, imagine the corpse of a woman lying in the grave and devoured by worms, and the flame of passion will be extinguished in you then."

Thirdly, Christ left bodily death for the correction of our evil morals. Almighty God sees with His all-seeing eye that man has been added to the senseless beast in His dumb lusts, and therefore He constantly cries out to sinners: "Do not be like a horse and a mesk (donkey), which has no understanding" (Psalm 31:9). He sees that a person goes where his sinful habit leads him, that everyone cares only about how to please his flesh, so that it does not suffer need of anything, and He cries: "Do not wake up like a horse and a meshk, which has no understanding..." But all in vain, O my God, people do not listen to Thy commandments, do not heed, O Sweetest One, Thy exhortations! The madness of people has likened them to senseless beasts, they do not want to listen to Thy words of salvation: "They have not faith in His words, and they have profaned in their villages, not hearing the voice of the Lord!" (Psalm 105:24-25). What does the All-Merciful Lord do after this? He tightens (bridles) with the bridle of death the frenzied, insane striving of people for all evil: "With furrows and bridles you will tighten their jaws" (Psalm 31:9). You know, brethren, what the bridle is made of: from a belt, from dead skin. With the same bridle, that is, by death, He draws up the indomitable malice of man: "With furrows and bridles you will tighten their jaws!" the sweet yoke of my commandments you trample underfoot, and count as nothing; you say: "Let us break their bonds, and cast away their yoke from us" (Psalm 2:3). Here is the bridle of death, it will curb your bestial morals!

So, Orthodox! The All-Merciful Lord frightens self-willed sinners with death, like a judge who orders the gallows to be erected, so that the evildoers, at least at the sight of it, will cease to do evil. Look: how does the Lord God tame the indomitable agitated sea? How does He stop its raging waves? With only sand: "The sand has set a limit to the sea" (Jeremiah 5:22). And what is a man who is indomitable in his evil sinful lusts, if not a fierce sea, agitated by the stormy spirit of the strangled enemy? (Jude 1:13). And how can you tame this cruel storm? Also with sand: "For thou art the earth," says God, "and unto the earth shalt thou go" (Gen. 3:19). "The sand has set a limit to the sea! Thou hast set a boundary, but it shall not pass away" (Psalm 103:9).

Fourthly, Christ the Savior left death on earth in order to humble and overthrow human pride. And if it were not for death, what would not people dare to do, filled with pride? Alexander the Great, the conqueror of many nations and kingdoms, the terror of the whole world, came to such pride, to such madness, that he called himself a god, and if this imaginary god lived forever, what evil would he not have done? To what degree of pride would I not have ascended? He had already said that he held the east with one hand and the west with the other, and then he would have ceased to consider himself a man! But death opened his eyes: in the thirty-second year this imaginary god ended his life like all mortals, and the word of the Scripture came true over him: "I am God... but ye die as men, and as one of princes ye fall" (Psalm 81:6-7). There are other reasons why the Lord did not destroy death: He. He left it for the consolation of the poor, decrepit, unfortunate sick who wish to find rest for themselves in death. But death is especially desired for the chosen ones of God, who, despising this life full of so many misfortunes, place all their hope in the heavenly life, which has nothing to do with sorrows and corruption. Each of them says to the holy Apostle: "He who desires to depart and be with Christ..." (Phil. 1:23). "Cursed is man: who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24). "For our life is in heaven" (Phil. 3:20).

(From the works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov)

204. What shortens our life?

"And I have come in the years that I have come, and in the way which I will not return, I will go" (Job 16:22).

With incomprehensible speed, brethren, this count is being conducted... What I say goes away; what I have said is irretrievably gone; and what I want to say, I do not know whether the Creator will give me my time and strength to say. So let us all come to the last words, and say: "In Thy hands, O Lord, we commit our spirit." With this we will end everything... and then only some faint signs of life will remain in us, just as in a clock that walks, a quiet movement is heard; that is, there will remain the heavy and slow sobbing of a cramped breast, or the last breath of an exhausted man, which, after repeated several times, subsides forever, and which already belongs to the number of life, just as the last point to the letter we have finished. And is not our life flowing like a word? That I live is gone; that he lived is irretrievably gone; that I want to live — I don't know if my Creator will allow it... And yet, what I have lived is counted by my Creator. "And the years have come, and on the way which I shall not return, I will go!"

Our life is short, my friends; and we ourselves urge God to shorten our short life again and again... Only on earth and there was a good place, that paradise. Only there was life for us that is in paradise. Paradise life could only be called life. It was spent in all the joys that the human heart could desire. Adam and his helper enjoyed everything that was sinless: they had a beautiful body, and a most beautiful soul, because it was holy and godlike; their heart rested in God and His holy will; their desires aspired only to God, the source of blessings, for the gift of which they sent thanks to Him; their conscience was clear. They were children who were portrayed as the Heavenly Father. They had no one to fear, nothing to cry about; A divine remedy has been given against old age... And what happened? Sin has changed everything! Sin made man an enemy of God and His will, and gave him another, more terrible image. He made his holy and God-loving soul the most selfish, the world turned into a hospital in which nothing is heard but lamentations, nothing is seen but misfortunes! Sin has terribly shortened life itself; He brought death not only into the world, but also into our body; And this evil mistress, reigning over people, crushes them with various diseases and, finally, destroys them to dust. The bliss of paradise passed away like a dream, and only the bitter memory of it remained with us. "But death reigned from Adam even before Moses (and before us), and over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression" (Romans 5:14). However, I also see God's mercy to people and goodwill to continue their lives. Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years. Even those great people whom we call Forefathers or Patriarchs lived for several hundred years and left us an example of virtue rewarded with prosperity and longevity.

What then? Perhaps this will remain an inheritance to the human race? But no; Wickedness abounds on earth, iniquity grows, malice and inhumanity increase, iniquities pour out like a stream, sins cry out to heaven, the Most High is grieved, and, in vengeance, He determines and says: "My Spirit shall not dwell in these men for ever, for they are not flesh: but their days shall be a hundred and twenty years" (Gen. 6:3). Let our poor life at least remain on this decree of God. Let a man live a hundred and twenty years: perhaps we, having lived so many years in the fear of God and godliness, which, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "is profitable in all things, the promise which hath life now and that which is to come" (1 Tim. 4:8), would see with our own eyes God's blessing on ourselves and on the sons of our sons, and, comforted by it, would go to the grave, as in the door of the Heavenly Kingdom, to God as to his own Father. But it is not so: sin, having reigned in the hearts of men, has driven out the love and fear of God, a desperate, God-hating life has appeared in men, and such deeds as only their God-killing heart desires: forge, according to the words of Solomon, their evil hearts are forged! (Proverbs 6:18). But Thy justice, O Lord, is according to our lives, and we are already deprived of Thy mercy in righteousness and by our deeds. And if one out of a thousand is vouchsafed it, then he is a miracle: for already "the days of our years, in them seventy years, and if they are able to do it, ten years, and multiply their labor and sickness" (Psalm 89:10)... Forty years have been taken away, or are prescribed for deliberate illnesses! But as a punishment it happens that even the last prescribed number of years is taken away from us, and we die in the mid-day, and many do not even live to see the mid-day; we die in the first flower of years — in cradles; we die on the very day on which we were born, we die in the very womb of our mothers; we die so that those who give birth may see the heavenly wrath against sin, and those who die so that they may be saved from those sins in which, imitating their fathers, they would drown. Good people do not live to harm anyone, but do good to everyone as much as possible; they love everyone, and everyone loves them, and they would give them their own days. Their life is counted not by day, but by virtue: for a bad man has not done so much good to anyone in the course of seventy years as a virtuous man has done in the course of seven days. However, the good often die untimely, and are cut when no one expected it. He Who looks down on everything from heaven, seeing that the good will not be good for a long time, that the evil will make the good more evil than themselves, does not allow them to live any longer. That is why Solomon says of the virtuous: "He was caught up, lest malice change his mind, or flattery deceive his soul. Having died in a small way, he fulfilled the year of duty: for his soul was pleasing to the Lord, for this reason he sought from the midst of wickedness" (Wis. 4:11:13-14).

How long, how firmly the trees and stones remain! Only we alone are nothing in comparison with them! Many of the animals are very strong and long-lived; but man, their master, is weak, and often trembles at his own subordinates... Silver is strong, gold is durable; but the lover of money soon dies, and becomes dust.

I dare not compare our life with eternity. Eternity is a sea without shores, and our life is a raindrop that drops on the earth, and there is no trace of it. God is and remains; And we are: a ghost, and our life is a ghost. Life is as small as breathing: I breathed in, and a part of my life disappeared forever... but whether I will breathe any more, I do not know myself, for all sinners are threatened with this rebuke: if you do not listen to Me, I declare to you this day, that you will perish in destruction, and you will not be on earth for many days. If, brethren, let us also consider that man is often burdened with such troubles that he cries out with Job: "Why did he not die in the womb? but he came out of the womb, and did not perish!" (Job 3:11), then will not our life seem twice as short if we choose only happy days from it to count, which we must look for almost with a candle? I know that life is not without joys; but that is a drop of sweetness in the cup of sorrow. "Yet I am in the mouth of the feasting people, and the wrath of God has ascended upon them," says St. David about the Israelites (Psalm 77:30-31). Such are our joys in the world! If, even in the shortest duration of a miserable life, someone finds that consolation — to suffer for a short time in the world, then what will happen if we fall from a short-term torment for unrepentance into eternal torment?