Why do we mourn when somebody dies in spite of a Christian having eternal life?

We mourn because we miss the person who has fallen asleep. The death of a loved one particularly also reminds us of death, and our whole being reacts against it as something unnatural. I don't know how often I have been to wakes or funerals and fully expected the person to sit up alive. Our minds simply cannot comprehend that the person who was once so full of life is suddenly bereft of it. Perhaps unconsciously we are weeping for our own sinfulness which is the cause of death. Remember what St. Paul says in I Thessalonians, the passage read at funerals. He tells us not to mourn as those do who have no hope. He doesn't say, "don't mourn", but "don't mourn like those who have no hope." In antiquity people went to unspeakable lengths in their mourning to the point that laws had to be introduced to restrict it. Women especially would rip their faces with their fingernails or pull out their hair, and really wail (if you have ever been to a REALLY Greek funeral, you experience a small part of that wailing). Why - because they had no hope. Death was the end. Also remember that Christ our God wept at the tomb of Lazarus just a moment before He was to call him out of the tomb. Christ felt the burden of death, he felt the burden of loss and wept. He wept because His creation suffered from this horrible curse and because this horrible curse breaks our hearts by losing from our lives the presence of someone dear to us. But we also know that Christ fought death on its own turf and conquered it by filling death itself with life. We sing that at the Vespers of the Dormition: the tomb has become the ladder to life. Christ did not just conquer and destroy death, He actually transformed death into the path to life. So your two feelings are not wrong or out of line. You are feeling the very same things Christ Himself felt -- sorrow at the loss of someone you loved, sorrow at the very reality of death, and yet joy because we know it is not the end.   Sourced from the Orthodox MSN Group