Naked You Came Out of Your Mother’s Womb, and Naked You Shall Enter the Earth
The Wise Man: And tell me, after their death, of all that wealth and treasure, how much did they take and carry away with them?
The World: Know that they went away wrapped only in an old piece of cloth, as though clothed in a shirt of silk; laid in a coffin, as though robed in a garment of purple; and cast into a pit, as though resting in great and splendid palaces and courts. And nothing else did they take with them to carry, neither in their bosom nor on their back.
Without meaning to, the World here confesses what the Church sings at every funeral: that man returns to the earth from which he was taken, naked as he came. Righteous Job said the same centuries before Cantemir: „Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there” (Job 1:21). This is not a word of despair but a sober judgment on things: everything man gathers — gold, estates, offices, fame — stays at the gate of the grave like a guest who is not permitted to go any further.
The World’s own remark deserves attention precisely for its irony: the old cloth is called „silk,” the pit is called a „palace.” This is how her deception works throughout a man’s whole life — dressing up the little and the passing in grand words, so that it appears much and lasting. St. John Chrysostom says that wealth is not evil in itself, but the one who clings to it forgets that he is only a steward, not an owner, and that on leaving the world he gives account with empty hands for all he gathered without mercy toward others. St. Basil the Great, in his homilies to the rich, says the same thing even more sharply: full barns do not travel with you into the grave but remain an inheritance for strangers, while the soul departs as poor as it came.
Ecclesiastes confirms the same law: „As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return, going as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor which he may carry in his hand” (Eccl. 5:15). And the Apostle Paul makes this the very foundation of Christian contentment: „For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7). This is not a law that humiliates man but one that sets him free: the one who knows he will take nothing with him no longer needs to strive without measure after what passes away, but can turn his labor toward what alone remains truly his beyond death — deeds of mercy and purity of heart.
St. Isaac the Syrian says that the remembrance of death is the clearest mirror of the soul, for before it the true measure of things becomes visible: what is worth desiring, and what is merely paint on something that is unraveling regardless. The one who keeps always before his eyes the pit in which he will be „laid as in a palace” is no longer deceived by the old cloth that the world calls silk.
