Word delivered at the funeral of reader Alexyi Davidov [+2021, Feb. 8]

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ!

Today we physically part with our beloved reader Alexyi. In his turn, he passed through the gates of death.

Human experience has shown that death is ingrained in our bodies since conception. We live in a delicate balance of scales between life and death, which in our bodies is observed at a cellular level. When we are growing up, life prevails, and when we are growing old, death prevails.

Likewise in spiritual life. The life of Christians is always on the scales between spiritual death and spiritual revival and living in Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit. We are faced with the choice of following the path of sin or the path of life. When we indulge in sin, spiritual death prevails, and when we struggle to be faithful to the Savior, when we long for true repentance, when we repent with spirit and truth, spiritual life prevails.

We Christians believe that after Christ's death and Christ's resurrection, the bodily death of those who are Christ's is not a consequence and a sign of a man's separation from God because of sin. Those who are in Christ and He – in them, have received from Him the power to transform their suffering and death, to overcome death with their [own] death, to pass from death to life.

God knows the depths of the soul, but what He has vouchsafed us to feel and learn in our communication with reader Alexyi cannot leave us indifferent.

What have we felt from our communication with him – we felt warmth, softness, goodwill, compassion and care. We felt nobility, delicacy and bright cordiality. It is possible that these are [just] natural qualities, but we know that God transforms the souls of those who seek fidelity and endows them with flashes of holiness that illuminate those who associate with them with gracious peace and consolation.

What have we learned from reader Alexyi? He was a teacher by vocation. He composed wonderful, instructive, spiritually profound readings that he read during the communion of the clergy. He read from the Holy Scriptures and from liturgical texts during Liturgies. All this was edifying for all the worshipers. But what was especially instructive for us, who communicated with him more often? I will mention just two things that impressed me strongly. Reader Alexyi suffered from a severe physical disability that often made his life quite intolerable from a human point of view. And in these unbearable trials reader Alexyi had the courage to remain benevolent, not losing faith that God sends all misfortunes for the benefit of our souls. And he thanked God for that.

I was often impressed by the manhood with which he forgave and remained large-hearted, and by his diligent, sincere and ingenuous contrition and repentance for his weaknesses and mental infirmities. We know that repentance is the most difficult and valuable spiritual exploit.

These strokes of his spiritual image, which I have been able to perceive, reveal determination and diligence in faithfulness to Christ. The pursuit of fidelity gives birth to a spiritual interest and desire of the soul for communion with Christ and His saints. A few hours before his demise, reader Alexyi sent me several materials of spiritual content, the last of these were rare videos of St. John of Shanghai. About an hour before his death, on his way to the hospital, he told me over the phone that these materials had made a strong impression on him and he really wanted to share them with me. Apparently, before his death, he was under a living spiritual impression with his getting in touch with holiness.

I am grateful to reader Alexyi for everything I felt and learned from him and this does not leave me indifferent and hopeless for his eternal destiny. I hope for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and the saints, whom he dearly loved here on earth. May the Lord rest his faithful servant and inhabit him where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sigh, but eternal life. Amen!

† Bishop Seraphim of Sozopol
13 February 2021