(from a Russian text and the book "The End of the World" by the Serbian monk Archiman Stefanos -- Karoulia, Mount Athos)
"When a man dies, his soul hovers over his motionless and dead body and asks:
"Ma, how is it now that there are two of us, when before it was just me?" "Each soul has the same shape it had when man was alive and is recognized by other, familiar souls..."
A TRUE STORY...
I was an atheist.
I cursed God a lot and terribly. I lived in shame and fornication and was as if dead on the earth. However, the merciful God did not let me be definitively lost but led me to repentance.
In 1962 I fell ill with cancer and was ill for 3 years. Of course, I did not stay in bed, but I worked and treated doctors, hoping to get better. In the last 6 months, I had lost a lot of weight, unable to drink even water. As soon as I drank it, I immediately threw up.
They then took me to the Hospital and called a professor from Moscow to operate on me.
As soon as they opened my stomach, something happened and I died immediately!
My soul came out of the body and was standing between two doctors, while I was throwing my open body with great fear and terror. My entire stomach and intestines were affected by cancer.
As I looked at my body lying in the operating room, I wondered, how are we two? I couldn't understand this, because it was the first time it happened to me...
I had no idea there was a soul. The communists were inflating us and teaching us that the soul and God do not exist, that these are inventions of the priests, to deceive the people and keep the world in fear, of something that does not exist.
I saw myself standing upright in the air, but I also saw my body in the operating room...
The doctors took out all my entrails and were looking for the duodenum. But there was only pus, everything was damaged and spoiled, and nothing was healthy. I heard them say:
"She had nothing right to live for..."
I SAW MY BODY DEAD
IN THE SURGERY...
I watched everything with fear and always thought the same thing:
"How, and where are we two from? I'm standing, and at the same time I'm lying down!!"
I saw the doctors throw like-like entrails into the body, and I heard them say that my body should be given to the new medical specialists for their teaching.
They finally moved my body to the Mortuary, while I was going to them without them understanding it...
They left me lying naked on the marble, covered up to my neck with a sheet.
After a while, I saw that my brother came and brought my little son. She was six years old and her name was Andruska (Andrei).
My son approached my body and kissed me on the head. He began to cry saying: "Mom, mom, why did you die? I'm still young, how can I live now without you? I don't have a father, and you died too!..."
I then hugged him and kissed him, but he did not understand, nor did he see or notice. Only my dead body was alive...
I also saw how my brother was also crying...
After that, I inexplicably found myself at home. I saw my mother-in-law from my first marriage enter the house, as well as my mother and my sister. I had left my first husband because he believed in God.
In a little while they all started distributing my things. I was then living richly and in luxury but with money acquired through injustice and prostitution. My sister started removing the nicest things from my things, while my mother-in-law asked me to leave something for my little son.
My sister did not give anything, but in addition, she began to scold my mother-in-law, saying to her:
"This child is not your son's, and you are nothing to him now..."
After some commotion, they went out, closing the house. My sister took a big bag of things with her.
But while they were arguing about things, I saw with horror around us dancing and rejoicing devils...
Suddenly I found myself in the air as if I was flying in an airplane. I felt that someone was holding me and that I was rising higher and higher. I found myself above the city of Barnaul, but immediately lost it, falling into deep darkness. In a little while, a light began to come that grew stronger and stronger, reaching the point where I could no longer look at it.
They put me on a black slab about one and a half meters high, while I saw around me huge trees with beautiful foliage, as well as new houses but without seeing faces. I was looking at the green valleys and thinking "Where am I now?"
If I'm on earth, I said, then why don't I see people, factories, roads, transportation... What places are these here, without people, and who lives here anyway?
THE MEDIATIONS OF THE VIRGIN!
And while I was thinking this, a beautiful tall woman dressed in royal dresses, interrupted my thoughts!
She walked so lightly that the grass did not bend under her weight. A young person was walking near her, crying, covering his face with his palms. She was crying bitterly, and as if something was pleading with her, but for what reason I could not hear.
I thought maybe he was her son and inwardly protested her indifference. (Of course, I would understand much later that this face was my guardian angel who had been given to me at my baptism and who was now crying for the loss of my soul that would go to Eternal Hell. He was begging the Virgin Mary to intercede with Christ so that I could be saved ...)
When they approached me, I saw this young man falling at the feet of this beautiful woman, pleading with her in more intense pain, and asking her for something. She said something to him, but I couldn't understand her words.
I wanted to ask them "Where am I?" when I saw this woman crossing her arms over her chest, and looking at the sky I heard her say:
"Lord, where will she go, as she is?"
I then began to tremble, and I understood that I had died, with my soul in heaven and my body on the marble of the Necrostasis...
I began to cry and ache, feeling the gravity of my position, when I heard a voice say:
"Bring her back to earth, thanks only to her father's good deeds..."
But another voice answered:
"I am tired of her sinful and corrupt life. I wanted to wipe her off the face of the earth without repentance, but her father begged me for her. Show her the place she deserved to go..."
IN THE INNER HELL...
Immediately I found myself in Hades.
Then they began to crawl up to me, terrible glowing snakes with long tongues that spewed fire and other disgusting filth.
The stench was unbearable.
These snakes coiled themselves around me, and at the same time worms as thick as fingers appeared from somewhere, with tails ending in needles and hooks. These entered all my open parts, ears, eyes, nose, etc. and thus they tortured me and I screamed internally, and not with my voice.
But there was no help from anywhere, no mercy from anyone.
There I saw that a woman who had died from an abortion also appeared, and began to beg the Lord for mercy...
I heard a terrible voice saying to her:
"You on earth did not recognize me, you killed the children in your womb, and you told people: "You must not bear children, children are unnecessary".
But in Me, there are no unnecessary things.
In Me, there is everything and enough for everyone!!!
And addressing me he said:
"I gave you the disease to repent, but you cursed me until the end of your life and did not recognize me. That's exactly why I don't recognize you now! And just as on earth you lived without Lord and God, so here you will live without Me...!
And suddenly all this, taking on another aspect, changed...
It was like I flew somewhere. The stench and the loud howl disappeared, and I suddenly saw the church I was playing at. The Beautiful gate opened and the priest dressed in white came out of it. They stood with their heads bowed while a voice spoke to me:
"Who is this;"
I answered, "he is our priest."
"Weren't you there when you said he was a slob? But he is not a philanderer, but a real shepherd! He is not a hired and mercenary as you said...
And learn also, that he may be a simple priest, but he faithfully serves Me. And if he doesn't read you the wish of forgiveness in confession, I'm never going to forgive you"!
Then I began to plead:
"Lord, bring me back to earth, I have a little son."
The Lord said:
"I know you have a young son, and it's a pity for him..."
"It's a shame, sir," I replied.
"I feel sorry for you all, he said. And three times I pity you... I am waiting for you all... But finally, when will you wake up from the sinful dream you are living in, when will you finally repent and come to yourself?"
And saying this I saw the Mother of God again. I got the courage to ask her:
"Is there here to you, Heaven?"
YOU ARE OURS NOW...
But, instead of an answer to my doubt and my question, I found myself again in hell and Hades. The demons came running with lists pointing to my sins and shouting:
“You served us when you were on earth. You are ours now!...»
I began to read my sins and all my works, which were written in large letters, amid great fear.
I could see fire coming out of their mouths as they hit me on the head. Red-hot sparks of fire fell on me and stuck and burned me. Around me was heard a terrible wailing, a terrible thunder, and the cutting of many people.
When the fire grew stronger I could see everything around me. The souls were awesome-looking. Some were crippled with stretched necks, others with swollen eyes.
They used to tell me:
"You are our comrade, (obviously meaning the communist greeting), and you too are obliged to live with us now...
Like you, so we too, when we lived on earth we did not recognize Christ, we cursed and blasphemed, we did every evil, especially fornication, and pride, and we never repented.
Many sinned but repented and then went to Church, prayed to God, had mercy on the poor, and helped every person in need. All of them are now up there, far away from us... (apparently meaning Heaven, which they didn't even want to mention by name...)
I was afraid hearing these words, and indeed that I would live in these terrible places for all eternity...
After that, in a light that dispelled the darkness, the Mother of God appeared again. The demons fled, while the tormented souls began to beg her for mercy with loud voices:
"Heavenly Queen, do not leave us here any longer, Mother of God we beg you, we are burning and there is not a drop of water to quench our thirst..."
She wept sympathetically with them, but not having the power to redeem herself, she said to them:
"As long as you lived down on earth you did not recognize me, you even cursed me. You did not repent of your sins against my Son and your God, that is why I cannot help you now. But neither can Christ violate the will of His Father!
I help only those for whom their relatives beg and the holy church prays for them"
After these words we began to rise, while from below the voices of those in hell were getting louder: "Mother of God, don't leave us..."
RETURNING TO MY BODY...
I found myself again in darkness on the same slab, while the Mother of God, again crossing her hands on her chest and raising her eyes to heaven, began to pray, saying:
"What shall I do with her, Lord, where shall I put her?" while a voice answered her:
" Bring her back to earth, bring her back...
I saw the Mother of God pushing me to the ground, and passing invisible through the walls I found myself in the Mortuary and the refrigerator looking at the other corpses.
I said to myself in my soul:
"go now to your body", while a strong chill came over me. At the same time, someone turned on the light, bringing a new dead body. They noticed my return from the prone position where they usually put the dead in the refrigerator, and all the nurses scattered in a panic...
They quickly returned with two doctors, who began heating my brain with lamps. There were eight incisions on my body, three on the chest and five on the abdomen. Two hours after warming the head I opened my eyes, and it was only after twelve days that I finally managed to speak.
They brought me breakfast, pancakes with butter, and coffee. I told them that today is a fasting day and I will not eat from them. The nurses left again, and some doctors came. They asked me why I refused to eat. I answered them:
"Sit down, and I will tell you what my soul saw. Whoever does not fast on the days of fasting, will eventually live in a terrible and terrible state. That is why I do not want to be cured, I who at first did not believe in them. .."
The doctors turned red and yellow from surprise, but the patients gathered around me listened carefully. Many doctors then gathered. I told them that now I have nothing, I don't hurt anywhere. I was showing my wounds and telling the world what happened to me. Finally, the police intervened, they took me from there and took me to another hospital.
There I recovered completely, but I begged the doctors to take another surgical look at my condition. They put me in the operating room again and when they opened my abdomen they said:
"Your entrails are healthy and clean, like a child's".
The doctors who had performed the first operation and died also came and asked: "Where is her disease? Her entrails were all rotten and disintegrated from cancer and now we can see them perfectly well!"
I answered them:
"The Lord and God showed his mercy on me, the sinner, giving me life to testify to others what happened to me. Christ took from me what was damaged and gave it to me strong. You see, sir, I said to the surgeon from Moscow, that you finally laughed? What can you say now?"
"It is true, he answered, that there was nothing healthy in you. It seems that the Most High (the Most High) has reborn you."
I answered him:
"If you believe in Him, make your cross and get married as a Christian" The doctor blushed because I knew he was Jewish..
No comments:
Post a Comment