NO FEAR OF GOD?
St Gregory Palamas to the Most Reverend Nun Xenia
The Son of God, who in His compassion became man, died so far as His body was concerned when His soul was separated from His body; but this body was not separated from His divinity, and so He raised up His body once more and took it with Him to heaven in glory.
Similarly, when those who have lived here in a godly manner are separated from their bodies, they are not separated from God, and in the resurrection they will take their bodies with them to God, and in their bodies they will enter with inexpressible joy there where Jesus has preceded us (Heb. 6:20) and in their bodies they will enjoy the glory that will be revealed in Christ (1 St. Pet. 5:1). Indeed, they will share not only in resurrection, but also in the Lord's Ascension and in all divine life.
But this does not apply to those who live this present life in an unregenerate manner and who at death have no communion with God. For though all will be resurrected, yet the resurrection of each individual will be in accordance with his own inner state (1 Cor. 15:23). He who through the power of the Spirit has extirpated his materialistic worldly proclivities in this life will hereafter live a divine and truly eternal life in communion with Christ. But he who through surrendering to his materialistic and worldly lusts and passions has in this life deadened his spiritual being will, alas, hereafter be co-judged with the devil, the agent-provocateur of evil, and will be handed over to unbearable and immeasurable chastisement, which is the second and final death.
Where did true death - the death that produces and induces in soul and body both temporal and eternal death - have its origin? Was it not in the realm of life? Thus was man, alas, at once banished from God's paradise, for he had imbued his life with death and made it unfit for Paradise.
Consequently true life - the life that confers immortality and true life on both soul and body - will have its origin here, in this place of death. If you do not strive here to gain this life in your soul, do not deceive yourself with vain hopes about receiving it hereafter, or about God then being compassionate towards you. For then is the time of requital and retribution, not of sympathy and compassion: the time for the revealing of God's wrath and anger and just judgment, for the manifestation of the mighty and sublime power that brings chastisement upon unbelievers.
Woe to him who falls into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31)!
Woe to him who hereafter experiences the Lord's wrath, who has not acquired in this life the fear of God and so come to know the might of His anger, who has not through his actions gained a foretaste of God's compassion! For the time to do all this is the present life.
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