ses the language so well to describe this chamber wherein haunting grief casts its gloom from the fire's dying embers and clings to each sad curtain, that one finds the man's obsession with death not at all unnatural. Unremitting sorrow has transformed this library into a mausoleum where all wisdom lies entombed with the books, bereft of any power to comfort the living, and the very furnishings seem to be draped with a shroud. The scene is set, the summons has been issued, the emissary of spiritual desolation awaits.Acceptance of the death of our loved ones is never easy. Though St. Paul cautions us to "sorrow not, even as others which have no hope" (Thess. 4:13), when our world has collapsed around us, Heaven seems a dim, far point of light in a vast universe of darkness. The effort to hold our hands, that Christ might bring us up from the depths, seems too great. His Church was built that "...the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (St. Matt. 17:18). But when we do not seek refuge in the Church, these same gates can swallow us alive. A desire to commune with those who have crossed the barrier from this life into the spiritual realm and to attempt to reconfer our carnal claims upon them is an invitation to evil. What God would never in His infinite mercy allow, Satan would appear to allow, so that this tragic deception might prevent us from seeking the salvation of God through humble acceptance. Elder Nectary of Optina once warned a well-known spiritist of his time: Oh, what a perditious and terrible thing! Under the guise of a deep Christian teaching and through his demon-servants who appear invisible to man at spiritual seances, he, Satan, by means of the lie of the ancient serpent, leads man into such pits and such thickets out of which it is impossible to extricate oneself, not even to discern one's state. (1)The tormented man, rationalizing that some perfectly natural phenomenon has been responsible for the rapping sounds,...
