The Pain
Why do we sin?
If you see death and the dying man
within the frame of earthly reality
in the way most people come to terms with it
and experience it likewise,
you will feel deeply sorry.
Indeed the mystery of death is formidable!
But if you see death under the light of God
within the love and compassion of God,
then, yes, death may be terrible and formidable,
–the gravest extreme–
but, still, it is the passage to true life.
∞
Rememberance and the thought of death
helps man come to his senses
and automatically get rid of a thousand and one spooks
which surround him or live within him.
We certainly know that we are going to die,
but why don’t we want to think about it?
Because we are afraid of death.
And one should indeed be afraid of death,
and shaken to the bone by it, but when he is without Christ.
Because the Lord said:
“He who believes in Me,
though he may die, he shall live”[1]
When somebody has got a pain which makes him suffer
but at the same time this pain foreshadows
that death is near, and man is departing this life,
then he is stripped bare of more or less everything.
He shows his true self in the eyes of God.
∞
Some patient,
as he was going through such an experience, the reality that,
any time then, he would be leaving this world, said:
“I wish I had been in the same frame of mind
I am now my whole life”.
This man by nature,
because of his inner makeup,
was very attached to some things.
Every minute of your life keep in mind
that after a while you may not be living in this world
but departing for the other.
Then the heart is disentagled, gets unstuck
and unhooked from all these things it was tied with.
The heart stays alone with God. It repents in His eyes.
This is how you are freed, saved.
You feel that paradise is coming into you.
“ Remember the time you will die,
and you will never sin”[2]
Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos
Holy Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications.
[1] John 11:25
[2]Wisdom of Sirach 7: 36
The pain.Why do we sin ?
