The Soul Lives On

So everyone, while still in this body, should already know that he must be committed to that state and office of which he made himself a sharer and follower in this life. He should not doubt that in that eternal world he will be the partner of the one whose servant and minister he chose to make himself here, according to that saying of our Lord: “If anyone serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there my servant will be also.” For as the kingdom of the devil is gained by consenting to sin, so the kingdom of God is reached by practicing virtue in purity of heart and spiritual knowledge. But where the kingdom of God is, there most certainly eternal life is enjoyed; and where the kingdom of the devil is, there without doubt are death and the grave. And the man who is in this condition cannot praise the Lord, according to the saying of the prophet, which tells us: “The dead cannot praise you, O Lord, nor all those who go down into the grave” (of sin, no doubt). “But we,” he says, “who live” (not, of course, to sin or to this world, but to God) “will bless the Lord, from this time forth and forever. For in death no one remembers God; but in the grave” (of sin) “who will confess to the Lord?” No one, that is, will. [a]

For no one confesses God while he is sinning, even if he were to call himself a Christian, or a monk, a thousand times over. No one who allows the things the Lord hates remembers God, nor can he truly call himself the servant of one whose commands he scorns with stubborn rashness. The blessed apostle declares that the widow who gives herself to pleasure is caught in this death, when he says: “A widow who gives herself to pleasure is dead while she lives.” There are, then, many who are dead while still living in this body, and who lie in the grave and cannot praise God. On the other hand, there are many who, though dead in the body, yet bless God in the spirit and praise him, according to this: “O spirits and souls of the righteous, bless the Lord,” and “Every spirit will praise the Lord.” And in the book of Revelation the souls of those who were slain are said not only to praise God but also to speak to him. In the gospel, too, the Lord says still more clearly to the Sadducees: “Have you not read what was spoken by God, when he said to you: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to him.” Of these the apostle also says: “That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

That they are not idle after their separation from this body, and are not without feeling, is shown by the parable in the gospel that tells of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man clothed in purple. One of them obtained a place of bliss, that is, Abraham’s bosom; the other is consumed by the dreadful heat of eternal fire. And if you care also to understand the words spoken to the thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise,” what do they clearly show but this: that the souls not only keep their former understanding, but also, in their changed condition, share in some state that answers to their actions and deserts? The Lord would certainly never have promised him this if he had known that his soul, after being separated from the flesh, would either be robbed of perception or be dissolved into nothing. For it was not his flesh but his soul that was to enter Paradise with Christ.

At the very least, we must avoid and shun with the utmost horror that wicked punctuation of the heretics. Because they do not believe that Christ could be found in Paradise on the same day on which he descended into hell, they punctuate it this way: “Truly I say to you today,” and then, making a stop, they attach “you will be with me in Paradise.” So they imagine that this promise was not fulfilled at once after the thief departed this life, but will be fulfilled after the resurrection. They do not understand what he declared, before the time of his resurrection, to the Jews, who imagined that he was hampered by human difficulties and the weakness of the flesh as they were: “No one has ascended into heaven but he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” By this he clearly shows that the souls of the departed are not only not deprived of their reason, but are not even without such feelings as hope and sorrow, joy and fear. They are already beginning to taste beforehand something of what is reserved for them at the last judgment. They are not, as some unbelievers hold, dissolved into nothing after their departure from this life, but live a more real life, and are still more earnest in waiting on the praises of God.

And indeed, let us set Scripture proofs aside for a little, and discuss a little, as far as our ability allows, the nature of the soul itself. Is it not beyond the bounds, I will not say of folly, but of the madness of utter stupidity, even to suspect in the slightest that the nobler part of man, in which, as the blessed apostle shows, the image and likeness of God consists, will become without feeling when the burden of the body that weighs it down in this world is laid aside? For it contains in itself all the power of reason, and by sharing itself with the dumb and senseless matter of the flesh, it makes that flesh able to feel. All the more so, since it follows, and the order of reason itself demands, that when the mind has put off the grossness of the flesh that now weighs it down, it will restore its powers of understanding better than ever, and receive them back in a purer and finer state than when it lost them.

The blessed apostle recognized so fully that what we say is true that he actually wished to depart from this flesh, so that by separation from it he might be joined more earnestly to the Lord. He says: “I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is far better; for while we are in the body we are absent from the Lord.” And therefore “we are bold, and our desire is always to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. That is why we also strive, whether absent or present, to be pleasing to him.” He declares, indeed, that the soul’s continuing in the flesh is distance from the Lord and absence from Christ, and he trusts with entire faith that its separation and departure from this flesh means presence with Christ. And again, still more clearly, the same apostle speaks of this state of souls as one very full of life: “But you have come to Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and the church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect.” Of these spirits he speaks in another passage: “Furthermore, we have had instructors of our flesh, and we revered them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?”