Archim. Cyprian, abbot of the monastery of St. Cyprus and Iustina (Fili, Gretsiya). RETURNING FROM THE DEAD IN MODERN Greece.
A t that, I am sending you a narration by a man I know who died and came back to life. I believe that it will be of interest to you as an example for your series of articles.
About four years ago, we received a call with a request to communicate the Holy Mysteries to an elderly woman, a widow living in the suburb of Athens. She was an old-calendarist, and, being almost completely bedridden, could not go to church. Although we usually do not perform such requests outside the monastery and [rather] send people to the parish priest, however, in this case, I had a certain feeling that I had to go, and having prepared the Holy Gifts, I left the monastery. I found a sick woman lying in bed: not having her own means, she depended on neighbors who brought her food and other necessary things.I placed the Holy Gifts and asked her if she wanted to confess something. She replied: "Well, over the past three years I have nothing on my conscience that would not have been confessed, but there is one old sin that I would like to tell you about, although I have confessed it to many priests." I said that if she had already confessed him, she should not do it again. But she insisted, and this is what she told me.
W hen she was young and had just married, 35 years ago, she got pregnant at a moment when her family was in a very grave financial situation. The other members of the family insisted on an abortion, but she refused outright. Nevertheless, in the end, she succumbed to the threats of her mother-in-law against her will, and the operation was done. Medical control of the clandestine operations was very primitive, as a result of which she received a serious infection and a few days later she died, unable to confess her sin.
At the moment of death, and that was in the evening, she felt that her soul was separating from the body the way it is usually described: her soul stayed nearby and watched how the body was washed, / s. 192 / dressed and put in a coffin. In the morning she followed the procession to the church, watched the burial chanting and saw how the coffin was put on the hearse to take it to the cemetery. The soul, as it were, was flying over the body at a low altitude.
S uddenly there appeared on the road two, as she described, "deacons" in shining sticharions and orarians. One of them read a scroll. When the car approached, one of them raised his hand and the car froze. The driver got out to see what happened to the motor, and in the meantime the angels began discussing with each other. The one who was holding a scroll, which undoubtedly contained a list of her sins, tore off from reading it and said: "It's a pity, there is a very heavy sin on her list, and she is meant for hell because she has not confessed it." “Yes,” said the second, “but it's a pity that she should be punished, because she didn't want to do this, but her family forced her.” “Very well,” the first responded, “the only thing that can be done is to send her back so that she can confess her sin and repent of it.”
U pon these words she felt she was being pushed back into the body, to which at that moment she felt an indescribable disgust and loathing. A moment later she woke up and began knocking from the inside of the coffin, which was already closed. One can imagine the scene following this.
H aving heard out her story, which I put out in brief here, I delivered to her the Holy Comunion and departed –– glorifying God, Who vouchsafed me to hear this. As far as confession is concerned, I cannot divulge her name, but I can report that she is still alive. If you think that this story may be useful to others, then you have my unconditional permission to publish it.
Note:
[1] Translated from the journal Catkches Orthodoxe, published by the author, vol. VIII, no. 26, pp. 74-84.
[2] St. Isaac Sirin.
[3] In Ch. 2 of this book, we talked about learning blessed. Augustine, that usually only saints have the opportunity to communicate with the living, and ordinary sinners are imprisoned in hell and cannot go out. However, it happens, as in this case, that God, with a certain purpose, allows souls from hell to appear alive. Such phenomena are collected in the book "Eternal secrets behind the grave."
As Blessed Augustine writes: “The dead themselves cannot squeeze into the soul of the living” (“Care for the dead”, ch. 16), and are alive only by God's special will. However, it remains true that such phenomena are very rare and that most of the phenomena of the "dead", especially those caused through the medium, are the essence of prodding demons masquerading as the dead.
...
