On the Second Coming of the Lord
By the Holy Hieromartyr Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Smyrna
By the Holy Hieromartyr Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Smyrna
The discourse concerns the Second Coming of the Lord.
But does the Second Coming of the Lord truly exist?
Is there immortality and a life everlasting to come?
Is there a future judgment?
Is there recompense after death?
Or do all things cease at the grave in this present life, and is the grave the final end — where together with the body life itself is buried and forever extinguished — and beyond the grave there exists nothing but the void?
This question is among the most serious of all and bears the highest importance for every earthly human being.
This is the great and eternal question which has occupied, occupies, and will forever occupy the human spirit — and for which the sleepless longing of noble souls and the unwearied expectation of the faithful have never ceased and never shall cease.
If there is no future life, then all is well for the carnal; then: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
But if the soul is immortal and eternity follows death — and therefore judgment and recompense exist in that future life — what then must our life here be?
For a moment let us set aside that, for us believers, the immortality of the soul and the future judgment are dogmas of faith, inviolable articles of belief. For in the Creed we confess Jesus Christ “coming again with glory to judge the living and the dead,” and we “await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.”
Instead, let us see what the many-named systems of error and falsehood say — the materialists, the mortal-soul advocates, the Sadducees of our age “who say there is no resurrection of the dead,” and let us overturn what they assert: that doctrines concerning immortality, judgment, recompense, and the Second Coming are merely delusive products of imagination, since no one has returned from the other world to reveal these mysteries.
Indeed, beloved readers — if man were merely a machine, a simple product and result of blind matter, living only for the present moment and this fleeting life like the animals, without higher purpose, without loftier destiny; if our life’s program were: eat, drink, for tomorrow we die — and we vanish into non-existence as the materialists claim — then I assure you no being upon earth would be more wretched than man.
The beasts, even those lowest in the scale of life, would be happier than man. For they also eat and drink as we do — often more and better than we — yet they possess the great fortune of not feeling their misery. No remorse devours their heart; despair does not keep vigil in their stall; anguish and moral torment do not lie awake beside them — as they lie beside the bed and pillow of the unbelieving man who neither hopes nor expects the resurrection of the dead: the demon of darkness — despair — and suicide, that ultimate crime of a corrupted life.
Thus the animals would be happier than man, because they do not think, do not reason, do not doubt the fleeting misery of their existence on earth — which for the thinking yet hopeless man becomes a cursed valley.
Such a man — unbelieving, hopeless, expecting nothing higher — abandoned without a compass (which is faith in eternity and hope), without a guide in the vast desert of this present life, finding no resting place for his spirit, not knowing whence he comes, where he goes, nor what this dream called life is — is the most miserable of mortals.
Life for him is darkness without light; a moonless night without a star. To live is utterly unworthy of the effort.
For if all ends at the grave, then — as the Apostle Paul says — “If there is no resurrection of the dead… if in this life only we have hoped, we are of all men most miserable.”
Then Christianity — this supreme flower of the wisdom of God, which brought true happiness on earth and promises eternal blessedness after death — would be the worst religion, and its followers the most pitiable of men.
The faithful would be worse than the impious; the wise and virtuous more miserable than fools and the depraved; man more wretched than animals.
And if we wished to feel true happiness — or at least avoid sorrow — we would need to descend to the lowest level of beings: the level of beasts!
Then everything is empty and vain: progress, science, arts, education, civilization, perfection, duty, virtue, morality, honesty, self-denial, and all noble acts of patriotism, philanthropy, and heroism — all become nothing, since they end in nothing.
All high ideals for which good and honorable people live, and for which they willingly sacrifice even their lives — are nothing:
“If there is no resurrection of the dead, our preaching is vain and our faith is vain… if in this life only we have hoped, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. 15:13).
For what then have we believed in?
In the eternal silence of the grave?
In darkness?
In nothingness?
Then, since human life is nothing but bitterness, sorrow, and despair, and since there is no just Judge in heaven — no God who punishes evil and comforts good, who sees our pains and gathers our tears and sighs, who crowns heroism, self-denial, and sacrifice — the only consolation left to unbelievers and materialists would be despair, suicide, annihilation.
This is the logical and unavoidable end for whoever neither believes nor hopes nor endures — who refuses to know anything of the soul’s immortality, the future life, judgment, and the Second Coming.
But no, brethren: the grave is not man’s end. Ashes and dust are not the final destiny of the divine breath within us — the soul, conscience, thinking and reasoning self, the free and personal “I.”
This spirit is immortal and eternal. This is the highest philosophical and religious truth — today the common possession of humanity, the most sacred treasure of every human soul.
All thinking humanity has always confessed this truth of the soul’s immortality: the noblest minds, the giants of philosophy, the true initiates of sciences and arts. Only a corrupted portion of men — theoretical or practical atheists and materialists, whose creed is “let us eat, drink, and fill the belly and what lies beneath it” — have dared to doubt this obvious truth in order to justify rotten principles and a corrupt life.
Our ancient forefathers, who first brought philosophy down from heaven, portrayed this truth visibly: upon tombs they depicted the soul as a winged, ethereal woman ascending to heaven at the very moment the dead body descended into the grave.
And our divine and spotless religion teaches that the God of Christians is not a God of the dead — of ashes and dust, of the eternal silence of cold graves — but a God of the living: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” said Jesus to the Sadducees who denied the resurrection.
Therefore we, faithful to the immortal teachings of wise ancestors, faithful to the religion of our fathers, faithful to the high ideals of our noble nature, faithful to the undying hopes of our race, faithful to the unshaken dogmas of our holy Orthodox Church, let us await with firm hope: the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
And let us believe that just as certain and true as bodily death is, so equally certain and true are the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, the future life, and the Second Coming of the Lord.
Source: “Agios Polykarpos” Year 2, Smyrna, no. 38, Feb. 16, 1913, pp. 1586-1589. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
