Can a very old person ask God to extend his life?

Can a very old person ask God to extend his life?

- In the Russian Panteleimon Monastery on the Holy Mount of Athos there was a monk named Anfim. He was middle-aged, maybe about my age. This monk had an obedience: he carried the head of St. Panteleimon the Great Martyr when pilgrims came or when people from other Athos monasteries came to worship the relic. That is, he was closest to the head of Panteleimon the Healer, to the relics of the holy great martyr. Nowhere closer.

Once again I come to Athos and on the cemetery I see a fresh grave with the inscription: "Hieromonk Anfim. He was diagnosed with cancer, and he burned out from the disease in just a month and a half."

Unbelievers or those who approach Orthodoxy in a practical, too earthly way may be perplexed. A person, it would seem, was near the relics of the great martyr and healer Panteleimon every day and suddenly dies as one of the first and dies at an age far from old.

Such people immediately have questions: "Have the relics stopped working? Why didn't the Healer help him in his illness?"

We must always remember a very important thing. When we pray for health, when we ask God for help, we must always leave a sober memory that no matter how much God extends your life, you will die anyway. How much we will not ask: "Great Martyr Healer, help! Mother of God, help me! Heal me today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, a year from now, give me another 10, 20, 30 years," you should always leave the memory that this will end someday, someday there will be an end.

After all, Christ Himself passed through this threshold of death, and the Virgin Mary followed Him the same way, and all the saints have passed, and Saint Lazarus of the four days, whom the Lord so miraculously healed, raised the already decaying dead man. There had never been such miracles. But Lazarus, too, had to die afterwards.

We sometimes ask in our prayers because we are given the right to ask. But we don't want to remember death at all. We can ask the Lord for more health, for a few more years of life, but we still want to remember the moment that it will all be over someday, we still have to die. You see, if a man carries in himself the memory of death, he begins to live soberly. He begins to live right, he does fewer stupid things.

And when a man says: "I do not want to think about death, I will not think about this terrible thing. I want only to think about good" then his spiritual life will have a bad result.

We need to remember death. This is our mind. It is impossible to live without the memory of death. That man who has health, but has no mortal memory - is already dead spiritually. He walks, blinks, moves in space, eats, drinks, but spiritually he is already dead to eternity. Memory of death is a big deal for a Christian, you can't do without it.

Archpriest Sergius Baranov