alyosha and elder zosima
A short reflection on the death of Elder Zosima
One of the more interesting events in The Brothers Karamazov is Elder Zosima’s death. In the Eastern Orthodox faith, incorrupt relics are seen as confirmations of holiness, so when Elder Zosima dies and his corpse starts decomposing and smelling like any other dead body does, it’s a scandalous affair.
People start to turn on him quickly, and it’s heartbreaking for Alyosha to witness his spiritual father undergo vicious attacks now that Elder Zosima is no longer there to defend himself. It also goes to show the blatant hypocrisy of Zosima’s critics—during Zosima’s life, they didn’t bring up these things to the man’s face. They only had the courage to start saying these things upon his death.
And I think Alyosha experienced a shaking of the faith for a multitude of reasons. The more obvious reason is seeing Elder Zosima’s corpse decomposing. After all, Zosima was a great man by all accounts, and if he can’t achieve sainthood, then what does that say for the rest of us?
But another subtle reason that probably disturbs Alyosha enough to reconsider his faith is seeing the reaction of the people who supposedly loved Elder Zosima. These are Christians, these are people who lived and knew Elder Zosima well, but their inherent jealousy and judgment caused them to turn on the kind, gentle, compassionate man.
It’s particularly upsetting to see this because these are people who should certainly know better than to act this way. As Christians, we should know better than to judge, than to cast stones, than to talk ill on somebody else—and yet, most of us do it anyway. We may often do this to people who don’t even deserve the judgment. One of the core tenets of Christianity is to love one another, so when we see an instance where Christians act so terribly cruel to a fellow brother or sister, it’s terrible. And I don’t blame someone if they want to question their faith after the fact.
As I sit here, writing this short reflection, it’s made me contemplate other examples within the Church where people act a way that repels inquirers, or repels people who would otherwise be more open-minded towards Christianity. I’m reminded of seeing figures like Jay Dyer acting uncharitably towards others—in the “name of Orthodox Christianity”—while I was becoming a catechumen. I’m reminded of stories of inquirers or other Christians getting scolded in church for not following certain rules. I see Christians acting cold and callous towards one another for one reason or another.
And I’m not going to sit and act as if I’ve never acted in shameful ways, because I have. And I reflect on these instances, and I try to change my behavior as best as I can. Like any human, I fail and fall many times, but what’s important is getting back up and continuing on the path to Christ.
The main takeaways I got from Elder Zosima’s death is the following:
For one, we should be careful about putting other people on pedestals. Because they are human at the end of the day, and they can err and make mistakes. They are not infallible.
We should also be careful not to let others’ uncharitable actions dictate how and when we interact with the faith. There are going to be bad apples everywhere and anywhere you look, because again, humans are humans. And humans have behaved in predictable ways for as long as civilization has existed. Envy, jealousy, hatred, trying to pull someone down who is deemed loved and successful—we’ve seen it all before. And Christ has taught us to rise above these behaviors, so we should try to do so as best as we can.
God is merciful. Not everyone is going to be a saint. Do I think I’m going to be a saint? No! Absolutely not. But does that mean I’m going to stop being compassionate, kind, empathetic, charitable as I’m called to be as a Christian? Also no. I want to keep doing those things, even though I’m 99.999% sure I won’t be achieving sainthood. God knows what is in our hearts. God knows that we are often trying our best. Elder Zosima’s death was seen as a failure by the people surrounding him—he failed to be holy, he failed to become incorrupt, he failed to be the good and righteous man in the end. And upon dying, his opponents finally had the gall to say, “aha! See? He wasn’t holy. He was a fraud.” But that’s now how I see it.
Elder Zosima was a good man, and Alyosha knew that. Alyosha loved him deeply because of his kindness, his goodness, his way of understanding the world through a compassionate lens. I like to think that people similar to Elder Zosima are accepted readily by God into the Kingdom of Heaven—despite their flaws, faults, errors, mistakes, what have you. And I also like to think that if we do our best to follow Christ and his teachings in our lifetimes, even if we don’t do so perfectly, He will still be awaiting us with open arms in the end.