”Holy Andrew, walking one day along the streets of Constantinople, saw a great and splendid funeral. A rich man had died, and his cortege was magnificent. But when he looked more closely, Andrew saw a host of little black men capering merrily around the corpse, one grinning like a prostitute, another barking like a dog, a third grunting like a pig, a fourth pouring something filthy over the body. And they were mocking the singers and saying: “You’re singing over a dog!” Andrew, marveling, wondered what this man had done.
Turning round, he saw
a handsome youth standing weeping behind a wall. “For the sake of the God of heaven and earth,
tell me the reason for your tears”, said Andrew. The young man then told him
that he had been the dead man’s guardian angel, but that the man had, by his
sins, greatly offended God, casting his angel’s counsel from him and giving
himself over utterly to the black demons. And the angel said that this man was
a great and unrepentant sinner: a liar, a hater of men, a miser, a shedder of
blood and a dissolute man who had turned three hundred souls to immorality. In
vain was he honoured by the Emperor and respected by the people. In vain was
this great funeral. Death had caught him unrepentant, and the harvest had come
without warning.”
(Excerpted
and Adapted by St. Nikolai Velimirovich)
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