What Happens After Death?

What you'll notice

Every Sunday, near the end of the long prayer at the altar, the priest names the dead. In many parishes, slips of paper with names are handed in at the door, two columns, "living" and "departed," and someone reads them all. On Saturdays in some seasons the Church prays for the departed by name. At Pascha the whole church shouts, over and over, that Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death. If you came from a tradition where death was talked about mostly at funerals, you'll find that the Orthodox talk about it constantly, and with surprising cheer.

You'll also hear the end of the world mentioned every week, calmly. In the litany before the Creed the deacon asks for "a good defence before the dread Judgment Seat of Christ,"¹ and the choir answers, "Grant it, O Lord," as if asking for a good day.

What it's called

The resurrection of the body: our bodies will be raised. The Second Coming: Christ returns in glory. The Last Judgment: every person stands before him. Prayer for the departed, in Greek kekoimemenoi, "those who have fallen asleep." The time between a person's death and the Last Judgment is sometimes called the intermediate state, a scholars' phrase you won't hear in church.

What's actually happening

What the Church says without hesitation

Here's what the Church says with full confidence, every Sunday, in the Creed: Christ "shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead," and "I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the Life of the world to come."² Death is real, and it's an enemy, "the last enemy" (1 Corinthians 15:26), and Christ has already beaten it. The Paschal hymn says he trampled down death by death, and Saint Athanasius argued sixteen centuries ago that the best proof is how Christians stopped being afraid to die.³ Jesus said it to Martha before he raised her brother: "He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live" (John 11:25).

Christianity doesn't pretend death doesn't hurt; it grieves with us. But it looks death in the face and says this isn't the end. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). God "will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death" (Revelation 21:4). Christ didn't dodge death or cheat it. He entered it and broke its power from the inside. Only half joking, you could call Orthodoxy an anti-death movement.

He will come again

The New Testament ends looking forward. The angels at the Ascension said it first: "This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). Saint Paul says the dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Jesus himself says, "The hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth" (John 5:28–29). Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, teaching catechumens around 350, put the Church's faith in one line: "We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the former." The first time he came wrapped in swaddling clothes; the second time "He covers Himself with light as with a garment."⁴

The Judgment

Jesus told his disciples what the Judgment looks like: "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats" (Matthew 25:31–32). Then he tells you what he'll ask about: whether you fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the sick and the prisoner (Matthew 25:35–36). It's the most practical exam in history, and the questions were published in advance.

The Church sets that Gospel before its people every year. Two Sundays before Great Lent begins, on the Sunday when meat is set aside, the services take the Second Coming as their theme, so that, in Hapgood's note, the sinner won't grow careless "through too secure a trust" in God's loving-kindness but will remember "that the Lord God is also a righteous Judge." The Saturday before it is kept for all the Orthodox departed, "who are awaiting the Last Judgment."⁵

Prayer for the departed

The Church also says, with the same confidence, that we should pray for the departed. Judas Maccabeus made an offering for his fallen soldiers (2 Maccabees 12:43–45). Saint Cyril of Jerusalem taught around 350 that the Church prays for those who've fallen asleep, believing it a very great benefit to their souls.⁶ Saint John Chrysostom urged his people to help the departed with prayers and alms, and not to grow weary of doing it.⁷ A convert received by the rite in Hapgood's book still confesses that the prayers of the faithful for those "who have departed this life in the faith, are favourably received, through the mercy of God."⁸ Love doesn't stop at the grave, and neither does the Church's prayer.

Why it matters

Notice where the Church goes quiet. It's sure about the beginning (Christ has defeated death), the ending (the Second Coming, the resurrection and the Judgment), and the duty in between (pray for them). About exactly what the departed experience before the Last Day, Orthodox teaching is restrained. The Fathers and the services use many images: rest, light, a place of green pasture, Abraham's bosom, waiting. The Church hasn't drawn them into a map, and Orthodox Christians are taught to hold those images with reverence rather than build a system on them. Many Orthodox writers describe the departed as still growing in love for God, helped by our prayers, in ways we don't fully understand. That reticence is a kind of humility.

The same restraint applies to the calendar of the end. "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Cyril told his catechumens the same thing from Acts: "it is not for you, He says, to know times or seasons."⁹ So the Orthodox don't spend much energy on timelines.

What they do instead is live as if the end has already started. Saint Basil, preaching on the six days of creation, said that "that which was begun in time is condemned to come to an end in time."¹⁰ But in the Liturgy, the end has already broken in. When the priest offers the gifts, he lists what Christ has done for us: "the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into Heaven, the Sitting on the right hand, the Second and glorious Coming-again."¹¹ The Second Coming sits in that list with the things that have already happened. The Church remembers it the way it remembers the Cross, because in the Eucharist the Kingdom is already tasted. The Church would rather you live now as a citizen of the Kingdom you'll wake up in.

Field Note: purgatory. Catholic teaching describes a "final purification of the elect" after death, called purgatory, and connects it with prayer for the dead.¹² The Orthodox also pray for the dead and believe the prayers help, but the Orthodox Church hasn't defined a place or process of purification, so purgatory as Catholic teaching describes it isn't Orthodox doctrine. Orthodox voices haven't all said it the same way. At Florence in 1438 Saint Mark of Ephesus granted that souls may be cleansed after death, but denied that any purgatorial fire does the cleansing; the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 spoke of the departed as either at rest or in torment, and helped by the Liturgy and alms.¹³ The funeral prays something simpler: rest "in a place of brightness, a place of verdure, a place of repose," and "Pardon every transgression."¹⁴

Field Note: the toll houses. Online you may run into the "aerial toll houses": a picture of the soul, after death, passing through the air while demons accuse it of its sins and angels defend it. The image appears in some saints' lives and spiritual writings, most fully in a tenth-century Byzantine saint's life. For Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Saint Justin Popović, Father Michael Pomazansky and Father Seraphim Rose, it's a strong call to repentance and watchfulness. The scholar Paul Ladouceur argues that the toll houses are only one strand of Orthodox tradition, and not the strongest.¹⁵ The Church has never defined it.

Where it came from

Prayer for the dead is older than the Church: it's in 2 Maccabees, and Jewish prayer for the departed continued alongside it. The Liturgy of Saint James, Saint Cyril's lectures, and the earliest Christian inscriptions in the catacombs all ask God to give the departed rest. The Second Coming and the Judgment are in the apostles' preaching from the start, and the Creed fixed them, with the resurrection, in the fourth century. The restraint about the in-between is old too: the Church's great councils defined who Christ is, and they never issued a decree on the geography of the afterlife.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: pray for your dead by name, at home and at the Liturgy; give the priest their names; keep their memorials; give alms in their memory (Memory Eternal). Don't speculate past what the Church says, and don't let anyone frighten you with details the Church hasn't taught. "It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27), and none of us knows when, so the Church's advice about the end is mostly about now: "now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). There's a desert story about Abba Sisoes.¹⁶ A young monk said, "I fell." "Get up." "I got up and fell again." "Get up again." "For how long?" "Until your death." When you're afraid of death, which is normal, go to the Paschal hymn.

If you're visiting: you'll hear prayers for the dead at nearly every service, and now you know why. Nobody will ask you to believe anything about the afterlife beyond what you're ready to. If you're grieving, you're welcome to give a name to the priest and ask him to pray for the person you've lost; most priests will, gladly.

Go deeper

• 1 Corinthians 15 and Matthew 25:31–46.
• Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 15 (NPNF2 7), on the Second Coming.
• Go to the Liturgy on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, two Sundays before Great Lent, or to a Saturday of the departed.
• "Living the End in the Now," Simply Orthodox.

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