A Voice From Eternity (A Reflection at the Grave)

In the dusk of a quiet summer evening I stood, pensive and alone, at the grave of my friend. That day a memorial had been held for him; that day his family had remained at the grave for a long time. Hardly any words were heard among those present: only sobs were heard. The sobs were interrupted by deep silence; the silence was interrupted by sobs. And long did sobs alternate with silence, silence with sobs.

I stood, pensive and alone, at the grave, still under the impressions of the day. Suddenly an unexpected, wondrous inspiration came over me. I seemed to hear the voice of the departed! — His speech from beyond the grave, his mysterious conversation, his wondrous homily—as it took form in my soul—I hasten to set down with a trembling hand.

“My father! My mother! My wife! My sisters! Clothed in black garments, shrouded in deep grief both in body and soul, you have gathered at my solitary grave—with bowed heads you have surrounded it. In silence, through thoughts and feelings alone, you converse with the silent dweller of the tomb. Your hearts are vials of inconsolable grief. Streams of tears flow from your eyes; after the streams already poured out, new streams of tears are born: the grief has no bottom, the tears no end.”

“My little children! You too are here at the gravestone, at the grave marker! Even your little eyes have filled with tears, yet your heart does not know why your eyes weep, imitating the eyes of my father, the eyes of my mother. You admire the gravestone, the gleaming stone, the mirror-like granite; you admire the inscription in golden letters—yet that granite and that inscription are heralds of your early orphanhood.”

“My father! My mother! My wife! My kinspeople and friends! Why do you stand so long over my grave, over the cold stone standing cold guard over the tomb? My breathless body has long grown cold; by the decree of the almighty Creator it returns to its earth, it crumbles to dust. What heavy thoughts encompass you, hold you at my grave?… The ministers of the altar have offered prayer here for my repose, have proclaimed for me eternal memory in God who saves and gives rest to me. They have gone away from the silent grave: go away also. You need rest after the struggles of soul and body, wearied and torn by sorrow.”

“You do not go!… You remain here!… You have fastened yourselves to the place of my burial! In a silence that says more than any splendid eloquence could say—with a soul that admits no explanation—with a heart in which the abundance of feelings swallows up the distinctness of feelings—you do not step back from the grave sealed for many ages, from the stone—a monument without feeling. What do you want?… Are you perhaps waiting for my voice to come from beneath the stone, from the depths of the dark grave?”

“There is no such voice! I speak only through silence. Silence—inviolable stillness—is the inheritance of the graveyard until the very trumpet of the resurrection. The dust of the dead speaks without the sounds that earthly speech requires: through accomplished decay it proclaims a loud sermon, the most persuasive exhortation, to the seekers of corruption who rage and make noise upon the earth’s surface.”

“And yet I do have a voice! And I speak with you, and I answer your inexplicable thoughts, your unuttered and inexpressible questions. Listen to me! Distinguish my voice in the common voice by which eternity speaks to time! — The voice of eternity is one—unchanging, unalterable. In eternity there is no inconstancy, no variability: there the day is one, the heart is one, the thought is one. He who unites all in One is Christ. From there the voice is one.”

“In this voice by which eternity speaks—in this voice that is silent and yet like thunder—distinguish my voice! Surely you, my kinspeople, recognize my voice? My voice within the common, single voice of eternity has its own distinct sound, as the voice of a string within the common chord of a many-stringed piano.”

“The voice of eternity has spoken to all of us; it has spoken since the times of our appearance into existence. It spoke to us when we were still incapable of heeding it; it spoke to us also in our mature age, when we were already able and obliged to heed it, to understand it. O voice of eternity!… alas!… how few there are who hearken to you in the noisy earthly hostelry! Now our infancy prevents us from heeding you; then the cares and distractions of earthly life prevent us from heeding you. But you do not fall silent. You speak, you speak—and at last, through a fearsome messenger—death—you summon the attentive and inattentive listener alike to account for their attention and obedience to the great words of eternity.”

“In order that the voice of eternity might have for you a special resonance, specially capable of penetrating your heart and drawing your mind to the word of salvation, God has numbered me among those who speak from eternity. My voice has merged in harmonious accord with the common voice of the vast invisible world. For all pilgrims of the earth I am dead, voiceless, like all the dead—but for you I am alive; and though dead, I speak the word of salvation more openly, more powerfully, than I could have spoken it had I remained among you, chasing together with you the phantoms of goods by which decay deceives and destroys those banished from paradise and placed for a short time in the earthly hostelry for reconciliation with the God they have offended.”

“God is merciful—infinitely merciful. If it had been needful and beneficial, I would have responded to you suddenly from the darkness of the grave, from beneath the heavy stone!… Heaven has deemed a private voice from eternity superfluous… And what voice from eternity is not superfluous, when God was pleased that not only those human beings equal to the angels, but His own Only-begotten Son, should announce to the world His will—announcing the holy and strict statutes of eternity, which is blessedness for the obedient, and dread for the disobedient? ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them’ (Lk. 16:29)—this was the answer of Heaven to one who requested the voice of the dead to preach to those living the life of the flesh upon earth, but slain by the spiritual, eternal death. ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead’ (Lk. 16:31).

“My companion—a dead man, yet one still with a living word in his lips! Accept from me this commission and carry it out.

There is my father! There is my mother! There is my wife! There are my kinspeople! I cannot speak with them except through the common voice of eternity. In that voice they hear the sound of my voice as well… yes, they hear it!… but I have no separate, private word of my own… My companion! Be my word; from our common treasury, from the sacred realm of eternity, say to them on my behalf the brief, most needful word: “Earthly life is a fleeting, deceptive dream. Eternity is inescapable. There is also a wretched eternity!… Win for yourselves the blessed eternity through attentiveness and obedience to the all-holy law of the all-holy God—and come to me for sure, unending joy, each in your own time appointed by God alone!”

1848, Sergiev Hermitage. The meditation was written on the death of K. F. O., who from his youth had been in close relations with Archimandrite Ignatius Brianchaninov.”