This evening I attended Vespers (with a chrismation) at St Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church. Fr Mark greeted me and then we had a brief exchange about how today is both Holy Saturday (for me – Western calendar) and Palm Sunday and Holy Week (Eastern Orthodox calendar). Then he concluded (paraphase but pretty close):
“All time is compressed together in the presence of God”.
This struck me as a remarkable statement.
Consider the issue of death and the final resurrection. What happens to the “soul”? Does the “soul” go to be with God and then at the final resurrection is reunited with the body – and then we are in the presence of God not only as disembodied souls but as whole and transformed (metamorphosed) beings – spiritual and physical?
Do we not speak of those who have died as being “asleep” in the Lord? And yet this seems to veer all too near a teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – “soul sleep”. We are asleep until the final resurrection.
But perhaps the question makes no sense and has no meaning. If “all time is compressed in the presence of God”. What do I mean? I mean that within this world of linear time (the past now the present then the future) we can speak of now this person is dead and then they will be with God after the resurrection. (Or can we?)
But in the presence of God the one who is “asleep” in the Lord is with God in what we call the “now”. And so we can speak of all the saints who are with God that somehow are aware of what is going on in this world. Hence venerating the saints – even asking them to intercede on our behalf.
And there were Moses and Elijah speaking with him.
A few weeks ago I was enjoying lunch with two Chinese families and they asked many questions about religion in general and the Christian faith in particular. I admit that some of their questions were challenging and probably I answered poorly. “What is the purpose of religion?” (Meaning your religion.) Sounds simple – but try to answer it. But they also asked about what happens at death – they seemed to be aware of precisely the theological problem(?) described above.
What happens to the soul “between” death and the final resurrection?
But if all time is compressed in the presence of God we are asleep in the Lord – and we are with the Lord.
