Basil, great amongst the saints, had departed from this life to God; and the impulse to mourn for him was shared by all the churches. But his sister the Teacher was still living; and so I journeyed to her , yearning for an interchange of sympathy over the loss of her brother. My soul was right sorrow-stricken by this grievous blow, and I sought for one who could feel it equally, to mingle my tears with. But when we were in each other ' s presence the sight of the Teacher awakened all my pain; for she too was lying in a state of prostration even unto death. Well, she gave in to me for a little while, like a skilful driver, in the ungovernable violence of my grief; and then she tried to check me by speaking, and to correct with the curb of her reasonings the disorder of my soul. She quoted the Apostle ' s words about the duty of not being " grieved for them that sleep " ; because only " men without hope " have such feelings. With a heart still fermenting with my pain, I asked- Why, what is the especial pain you feel, asked the Teacher, in the mere necessity itself of dying? This common talk of unthinking persons is no sufficient accusation. What! is there no occasion for grieving, I replied to her, when we see one who so lately lived and spoke becoming all of a sudden lifeless and motionless, with the sense of every bodily organ extinct, with no sight or hearing in operation, or any other faculty of apprehension that sense possesses; and if you apply fire or steel to him, even if you were to plunge a sword into the body, or cast it to the beasts of prey, or if you bury it beneath a mound, that dead man is alike unmoved at any treatment? Seeing, then, that this change is observed in all these ways, and that principle of life, whatever it might be, disappears all at once out of sight, as the flame of an extinguished lamp which burnt on it the moment before neither remains upon the wick nor passes to some other place, but completely disappears, how can such a change be borne without emotion by one who has no clear ground to rest upon?
— Gregory of Nyssa
Gregory arrives at Macrina's bedside already broken, and what he describes in that catalogue of the corpse — no sight, no hearing, sword-thrust met with nothing, fire met with nothing, the body given to beasts and still unmoved — is not morbidity. It is the mind doing the only honest thing available to it: staring at the fact that the principle of life disappears the way a flame disappears, neither remaining on the wick nor traveling elsewhere, simply gone. He reaches for Macrina because grief needs a witness who has suffered the same loss, and she gives him the grief for a moment, the way a skilled driver gives line before correcting the horse. Then she pulls the curb: the Apostle's words, the duty not to grieve for those who sleep.
What Macrina is offering is consolation in the ancient mode — not comfort exactly, but a logic that promises the pain can be borne if the ground is clear enough. Gregory's reply refuses it, and his refusal is the philosophically serious move in the exchange. He does not argue against resurrection; he argues that without clear ground to stand on, the change cannot be borne without emotion. The soul that cannot mourn has already decided something it has not yet earned the right to decide. Macrina's reasonings will come, and they are intricate and worth following. But Gregory's grief, here, at the threshold, is not a failure of faith. It is the only honest starting position.
Gregory of Nyssa·On the Soul and the Resurrection·2016