The monk who died with a smile on his face

Isn't this a marvelous face? It belongs to Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, a monk of Mount Athos who died a few weeks ago; this image of Elder Joseph in his casket was taken at his funeral on the holy mountain. Surely this was a man who died at peace with his God and himself. Pray for a good death.

UPDATE: A further thought. The other day I was speaking with an Orthodox friend who had been to Athos on pilgrimage. He said it's an extraordinary environment, as you might imagine, but not the tranquil place you might expect. Rather, he experienced it as a place of great spiritual struggle -- which, of course, it is. But I think most of us imagine that a monastery is a place in which men (or women) retreat to work out their salvation in an atmosphere of leisurely contemplation. This was not how my friend saw it; he said that yes, there was a certain peace present there, but it was palpably hard-won. These men are not, as some might think, spiritual leisure-seekers, but spiritual athletes.

Even so, the smile on Elder Joseph's face is available to us all. But not without heroic work to overcome ourselves, and open ourselves up to the transformative energies of God. A monastery is one place that can happen. Your house or apartment is another -- and that's an unsettling thought, isn't it?

UPDATE.2: We just this morning in Cambridge heard a presentation about economics and rational self-interest. My colleague who gave the talk brought up Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, and pointed out as an aside something interesting about him: how in his will, he requested that his body be permanently on display after death. And so it is, in University College, London: behold, the Benthamite Auto-Icon. Alas, Bentham's actual head came off during preservation, so a wax reproduction now sits atop his decked-out corpse in the Auto-Icon. If you want to see what Bentham's actual mummified noggin looks like, click on through past the jump. It's, um, not so kissable.