“By compassion the soul is made blessed.”  Meister Eckhart

Death, the Judgement, heaven and hell. Why am I mentioning these in my column? There have been so many deaths this year of friends, relatives and folks we know.

We are in the delicate place of loss. How can we live with our loss? We cope with the painful but necessary process of grieving over the death of someone we love. Grief is very hard to live with. Each person’s loss and grief has its own unique quality. Everyone will suffer with some form of loss.

I read that death is the “father” of all losses. We are never very far from the pain of those we have lost. The difficult but necessary way of dealing with any loss is called grief. Loss often brings a pain that cannot be ignored. Personal, painful loss forces a door open into the deep parts of our soul. No one wants to deal with loneliness, insecurity and unmet longings that loss causes us to face.

Attending funerals offers something for your mind, your heart, your spirit, and healing. The mourner’s path of battered emotions is hard to bear.

Life goes by very quickly and old age comes suddenly. To fully embrace life, we have to accept the reality that life will end, and we will all die one day.

This is enough about the end of life. However, I found the answer to this question very interesting. I want to believe it.

Father Thaddeus was asked, “What can you tell us about the souls of the dead?”  Answer: We should not mourn the dead but instead pray fervently for our departed loved ones that God may grant them to dwell with the angels. If they have departed this world without having repented, we must pray for them that God might forgive their sins. We must perform acts of mercy to their name and in their memory for the peace of their souls. And God will accept such acts of love.

“Only the Lord can free a soul from the meshes of thought in which it became entangled while in this life and which still bind it in eternity. Only God can free such a soul. Therefore we must pray for our loved ones who are deceased. It is the most we can do: to pray that God grant rest to their souls and give their baptismal names to priest and hieromonks who serve the Holy Liturgy every day so that they may pray for their souls.”

Monday, May 28, 2018 is Memorial Day. War is an astonishing burden we expect men to bear. Boys served their country in time of war and died before they started their lives.

Men and women bravely go forth giving their lives for others to live. Men who witness horrors of men dying in foxholes, planes and tanks. These souls are brave, scared, strong and tough and willing to sacrifice their lives.   We honor the wounded and fallen and pray for our armed forces. We weep for humanity.

I did not plan for this whole column to be about death.  We all have our belief. I found the life and teachings of Elder Thaddeus extremely interesting and inspiring. There is so much more involve to the end of life.  21