Despre taina și ceasul morții
On the Mystery and the Hour of Death

Summary/Abstract: St. John Chrysostom wrote to the Corinthians that death „is rather sleep, displacement to another life, and not loss, the going from the lesser to the greater and better.” And he adds that „death is nothing else than the corruption of wickedness, (and that) death does not consume the body, but is the corruption of the body”. Everything born into this world, theologizes St. John Chrysostom, must die. This is the unchangeable judgment and law of God, and our sorrows are in vain. „From the beginning God made man, not to destroy him, but to guide him to incorruption. Even when God permitted death, He permitted it in order that by this punishment you might be made wise, and by becoming better, you might be brought again to immortality. If God had not willed from the beginning that the doors of resurrection should be opened, he would not have allowed death”. In general the Fathers define death in three ways: death as sin, or alienation from God, then death as the separation of the soul from the body, and thirdly, death as eternal reality, as hell, or as the choice of the creature to refuse God forever (for ever).

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