Dostoevsky: Love and Suicides

Dostoevsky: Love and suicides

I was just about to give up on finishing reading this deathly boring book about religion and brothers when I came across an interesting passage that made me love Dostoevsky even more than I already love him. He wrote about loving one another no matter what and if you cannot love a man, love the earth and soak it with your tears so the fruits can come up, or something like that. Then when I was finished reading that section, he writes this:

“But woe to those who slain themselves on earth. Woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offence to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life. I confess it, fathers and teachers, even now I pray for them every day”. Father Zossima in Brothers Karamazov.

I am reading this book on Kindle so I can’t quote the page it is on. But isn’t it beautiful? That in the late 1800’s a man wanted to pray for suicides when they were condemned by the church? And in Russia of all places!