Macrina the Younger (or the Teacher), old sister and teacher of Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa speaks to Gregory on her deathbed about the afterlife in Gregory's book titled "On the Soul and the Resurrection":
St. Macrina on the soul's lingering attachments, the second death as cleansing and alleged ghost phenomena:
I think our Lord teaches us this: that those still living in the flesh must, as much as they can, separate and free themselves from the attachments of the flesh by virtuous conduct, in order that after death, they may not need a second death to cleanse them from the remnants owing to this cement of the flesh, and, when once the bonds are loosed from around the soul, her soaring up to the Good may be swift and unimpeded, with no anguish of the body to distract her.
For if anyone becomes wholly and thoroughly carnal in thought, such a one, with every motion and energy of the soul absorbed in fleshly desires, is not parted from such attachments, even in the disembodied state; just as those who have lingered long in noisome places do not part with the unpleasantness contracted by that lengthened stay, even when they pass into a sweet atmosphere. So it is that, when the change is made into the impalpable Unseen, not even then will it be possible for the lovers of the flesh to avoid dragging away with them under any circumstances some fleshly foulness, and thereby their torment will be intensified, their soul having been materialized by such surroundings.
I think too that this view of the matter harmonizes to a certain extent with the assertion made by some people that around their graves, shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen. If this is truly so, it proves an inordinate attachment of that particular soul to the life in the flesh existed, causing it to be unwilling, even when expelled from the flesh, to fly clean away and to admit the complete change of its form into the impalpable. It remains near the frame even after the dissolution of the frame, and though now outside it, hovers regretfully over the place where its material is and continues to haunt it.
From Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection.
Commentary by Brad Jersak: to St. Macrina, the soul after death makes its journey from this world to God. What may impede that journey is our fleshly attachments to the material world. In our attachment to this world, we cannot help but try to drag our idols with us. These may include not only material possessions, but people to whom we are linked whether by obsessive love by unrelenting resentment, or to the past through regrets, remorse or any unfinished business. Their weight hinders us from letting go and torments us, necessitating “the second death” that cleanses us of them. The clinging that causes us to linger may explain alleged ghost phenomenon, which would prove the point. Rather than suffer the rigors of this cleansing post-mortem, Macrina believed that the fruit of “virtuous conduct” (unselfish love, radical forgiveness, abundant generosity, etc.) is that it releases us from our bondage to the demands of the ego (flesh) and the world [system].
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