by Jessica Ryder-Khalil
Today’s guest post is from a Being in Community frequent contributor, Jessica Ryder-Khalil. As skeletons, ghosts and other reminders of death adorn houses all around us in Western cultures as we head towards Halloween, Jessica’s words help us reckon with the harsh reality of death and the mystery of life.
Renewed attention has recently been given to the study of loneliness and isolation, especially in the wake of the pandemic response. The Surgeon General released a report earlier in 2023 on the importance of social connectivity for our overall health and well-being. It certainly looks like we have an intuitive idea of what happens to our bodies when we experience loss and separation because we say, “I feel like my heart is breaking.” Indeed, that is precisely the case. The HHS study reported that “social isolation and loneliness were associated with a 29% increase in heart disease and 32% increase in risk of stroke” (pg. 26). This psychosomatic connection shouldn’t really surprise us; our hearts take the brunt of our grief. In fact, this tightly knit design of interconnectedness should signal to us that we are in fact wonderfully and fearfully made to thrive in an environment of loving relationships and communal support.
The nearness of God to humanity is a bulwark of Orthodox Christian faith. We read in the Gospels, “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:7). It is always fun when we challenge our little Sunday School children to try to count their strands of hair. I had one precocious child ask if God knows about the hair on the rest of our bodies, too! God is intimately concerned with the details of our lives and if he knows when hair falls from our heads, how much more does He know when our heart is aching from loss and loneliness. The wonder of the Incarnation is even greater still! The Lord Jesus Christ experienced this very same inward groaning and heartbreak. He not only knows, but He felt it too. The nearness of God teaches us that we should be near to each other in our joy and in our sorrow.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s book For the Life of the World explores the closeness of our philanthropic God, the Lover of Mankind, through the sacraments and mysteries, in opposition to the secularization of western culture and religion. In it, Fr. Schmemann points out that Christianity does not deny the weight of suffering, disease, and death. Pain will break us whether we live as atomistic individuals or whether we choose community. However, like Christ who wept for Lazarus while also proclaiming to Martha the immanent reality of the Resurrection, so to we have victory by suffering and grieving with patience and hope. Fr. Schmemann writes, “It is when Life weeps at the grave of the friend, when it contemplates the horror of death, that the victory over death begins” (pg 121). Our victory begins when we walk through grief together with dignity, honoring the victorious One, and solemnity, holding up those who mourn.
The discussion of the secularization of death and disease in the West in Fr. Schmemann’s book packs a punch, especially when I reflect on the funerals of my non-Orthodox family versus the outpouring of communal, public mourning in the Orthodox setting. The experience of a western funeral and an Orthodox one could not be more different. He is entirely correct that funeral homes are sterile environments which do everything they can to whitewash the horrific reality of loss. Nothing brings this to light more than funeral directors dubbing the ceremony a “celebration of life.” While it is certainly healing and soothing to remember the good times we’ve had with our loved ones, we erase the gravity of human suffering and struggle if we reduce our lives to a highlight reel with no recognition of the miraculous continuation of life after death. There is no way to laugh or reminisce your way through the shadow of death. As Fr. Schmemann succinctly puts it, “The Church considers healing a sacrament… A sacrament- as we already know- is always a passage, a transformation. Yet it is not a passage into supernature, but into the Kingdom of God, the world to come, into the very reality of this world and its life as redeemed and restored by Christ” (pg 123).
My grandparents were very dear to me and their loss in 2013 and 2017 was simultaneously expected and shocking. We gathered as a family each time, but I needed more than that sanitized western funeral. I needed a reminder of the healing and transformation in Christ. Not long after my beloved grandfather’s death, I went for a walk and saw a rose bush in full bloom behind a chain link fence. The plant was large and healthy. One branch was poking through the fence with a beautiful rose on it. It stuck with me as both a source of comfort and as a good example of the Orthodox understanding of the mysterious proximity of the heavenly and the earthly. This moment demonstrated to me first that there is life on both sides of the fence, although on the other side there is a fullness that we cannot yet reach. Second, that we cannot pass through the fence; it is a definite barrier. Third, that even so the fence is porous, and the saints can reach out to us, and we can communicate with them.
Like the rose poking through the fence, the saints are our great cloud of witnesses and supporters. For believers, we know that we are never alone, even when there is no one else around. Within the church there is this unusual meeting of the heavenly and earthly, bound together in the love of God through the Son by the gift of the Spirit. This unity of the faithful is hard to explain to people who are outside the communion of saints, but it is the reason why the Orthodox hold dear the relics of the saints. First, we take the resurrection of the body as a foundational belief in a way that Western Christianity is not entirely comfortable with. These dry bones will rise as the prophet Ezekiel proclaimed. Second, we all hold on to the material things of loved ones who have passed, whether it is photos or other belongings. It is strange to think that we can love someone who lived hundreds of years ago, yet it is so. Sometimes those are the deepest, most abiding friendships. This meeting across time is exactly how we learn to love the Lord, someone who lived incarnate on earth 2,000 years ago but still reaches out to us now in His eternal glory.
In Psalm 116:15 King David prayed, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Some might take this out of context and derive from this verse a vision of a bloodthirsty, vengeful god. Or another take on this verse is how it is often used in funerals today- to describe how the Lord is happy to receive another saint in heaven. However, on deeper examination we can see that David is thanking the Lord for delivering him from death. This psalm isn’t for the one who has fallen asleep, but for the one who is still on earth working towards perfected peace, offering a sacrifice of praise, returning to the church to drink from the cup of salvation. It is inevitable that suffering will break our hearts, but the medicine of immortality is on the altar and beckoning us to “return to our rest” and walk before the Lord in the land of the living in the presence of His people. We are not alone in our heartache but can take comfort in each other, whether they be saints on earth or saints in heaven.
Jessica Ryder-Khalil is a frequent contributor to Being in Community. She is a wife and mom of four children between the ages of 16 and 7 years of age. She is a servant at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Gainesville, FL and is working towards an MTS degree from St. Athanasius & St. Cyril Theological School. Jessica was baptized into the Coptic Orthodox Church 17 years ago and is a continual learner along the path to Orthodoxy. Before family life took the lead role, Jessica taught English as a Second Language both abroad and in the USA. Her previous posts include An Hour in a Few Minutes, Spiritual Warfare Everywhere, and What My Mom Taught Me About Authenticity.
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