By Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern)
“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the age to come, amen!”
Modern cultured man has conquered transcendental heights. He has penetrated where no one has ever been or imagined. With his inquisitive and inquisitive mind, he strives for ever more distant, nebulous, and unexplored realms. With proud eyes, he surveys the world almost conquered by him, a world prostrate at his feet, a world obediently submitting to his desires, and with an insatiable heart, he longs for even greater victories. And his radiant happiness smiles upon him. Further and further he goes along the path of progress and civilization, conquering new territories. He is the king of nature; he conquers it and desires not only to play with it, but also to command it, to govern it, to dictate his laws to it. And he succeeds in everything… A man who lives by his mind and reason, forgetting his soul and heart, makes ever new discoveries. He has traveled everywhere, leaving no corner of the Earth unexplored, even penetrating its poles to confirm the existence of an imaginary, fictitious point; he has measured the depths of the sea, searched the ocean floor for supposed sunken continents; he has penetrated the depths of the planet, seeking within it that life-giving principle which, having killed the seed, nurtures it into a fruitful crop; he has risen above the clouds, desiring to overcome the laws of gravity…
But in his weakness, he still descends upon the bosom of that same loving Mother Earth, from which he was created and to which he will return. With the aid of ingenious and complex instruments, he seeks out new luminaries on the patterned porphyry of Him Who clothes Himself in light as with a garment, extracting from Him the laws by which the world was created and by which the heavenly stars revolve in perfect harmony. He has searched the entire sky, learning of the existence of luminaries billions of miles distant from us. And it seems that soon not a single corner of this heaven will remain unexplored… And despite the perfection of his telescopes, he has failed to discern God, Whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the sinful earth, for “no one has ever seen God.”
Man has studied the laws of life in the human body, even attempting to somehow subordinate the soul to these laws. His daring goes ever further. Not trusting the Lord, he seeks to correct “nature’s errors” and seeks new ways to create new animal species. He struggles to obtain new, previously unexistent, and unspecified grains in God’s plan of care for us. He wants to change nature, even influence God’s will. He yearns, passionately yearns, to snatch at least one hour, at least one day, from life; he tries to artificially rejuvenate old age; he fights everything that prevents him from being the master of this life. And he has discovered almost everything, knows almost everything, can do almost everything. He is only unable to transcend the two boundary pillars of his earthly path: to create new life and to delay or abolish death.
But man cannot animate even the smallest cell of matter by his own will. Thanks to his knowledge, he has studied the composition of animal tissues; he can even mix them and create identical, completely similar tissues, but he cannot animate them or breathe the breath of life into them. Just as invincible and mysterious to him is the menacing, knuckle-cracking death, which always stands before him, guarding him, defying all science and experience… The cultured man is powerless and ridiculous before it!
Endowed by God with reason, man has been inquisitively seeking Truth for seven and a half thousand years, gravitating toward the Absolute. Philosophical systems were created, new schools of thought developed, the mind worked tensely, striving to invent new things and comprehend the essence of things, although it knew that this essence of things (Ding an Sich) we will never comprehend. Bold, enticing, and at first glance so brilliant, the systems of all philosophical schools and movements were destroyed and forgotten before each new system that replaced them, which in turn was destined to be quickly replaced and forgotten, to remain merely an object of study for subsequent generations and to confirm that the history of philosophy is the history of the errors of the human mind. And not one of these brilliant and enticing philosophical systems, despite all their perfection, could answer this problem that torments humanity: “Why and what is death?”
The human mind is powerless to resolve this. Death is more powerful than it. Death silently does its work…
The unchurched mind approaches this riddle with difficulty, torment, and incredible pain. For the unbelieving mind, death is a terrifying and gloomy moment, a “dark bathhouse full of spiders,” in Dostoevsky’s words. Terrible antinomies confront the proud and powerful mind—the antinomies of life and death, freedom and death, their utter irreconcilability. So much is associated with the concept of life: enticing prospects, the joys of existence, bright horizons, freedom, creativity, a sense of self, the completeness of one’s personality, the feeling of being a small world—in short, life is alluring, beautiful, and full of everything. And yet, contrasted with this is the dark, empty thought of death, an all-consuming nothingness, the absolute darkness of nonexistence, the annihilation of every personality, the obscuring of all light. At the mere thought of death, a feeling of physical pain aches the weary heart, pounds tensely in the head, and suppresses all joy. Dostoevsky expressed this beautifully in his discussion of the pain of the fear of death. The terrifying specter of death haunts the days and nights of a great man who has conquered all, become like the gods, and with its constant thought reminds him of his approaching end, no matter how hard he tries to push this thought away. One must either conquer the idea of death or, by proclaiming that “there is nothing there,” lull the ever-gnawing thought of the approaching hour, beyond which lies emptiness, with this pitiful and feeble palliative. A crematorium is needed to incinerate the very thought of death with all its remnants. Nothing can fill this void; not a single religion, not a single philosophical system created by the human mind has yet provided a solution to our minds and hearts about what lies beyond death that satisfies our minds and hearts. And here, the answers of all thinkers are equally pitiful, insignificant, and empty: both nirvana and the transmigration of souls bring no joy to the mind or heart. There is no escape. Philosophy and science, occultism and theosophy, pantheism and atheism are equally unable to solve the riddle of this sphinx. Pitiful man! Alone! Without God! Without an answer!
Source in Russian: “Посмотрите на лилии полевые…” : курс лекций по литургическому богословию / архим. Киприан (Керн). – Москва : Образ, 2007. – 128 с./ “Look at the lilies of the field…”: a course of lectures on liturgical theology / Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern). – Moscow: Obraz, 2007. – 128 p.
