Question:

“My husband recently died, I constantly go to church, take communion, fast, pray for him, but I don’t know if my prayers help him. Why is that world so closed to us that we cannot get an answer that the departed feel that we are praying for them and that our zeal is not in vain? How should you pray for them?

Answered by prof. Alexei Ilyich Osipov:

If it were impossible to change the spiritual state of the soul there, then why did the Church from the very beginning of its existence pray for the departed? And she constantly commemorates them and calls all believers to prayer, teaching them how to do it correctly. Prayer help is especially important in the first 40 days after the death of a person, which, of course, does not mean at all the uselessness or uselessness of prayers in the subsequent time. But what should it be?

Answering this question, it is necessary to say about two completely different understandings of prayer, performed both individually and at divine services. One thing is really a prayer - sincere, heartfelt, repentant. The other is pseudo-prayer - the utterance of only the words of the prayer, but without the prayer itself.

Unfortunately, the second understanding, as a rule, prevails in our lives. This happens out of ignorance, out of laziness, out of self-justification. Prayer is often called the reading or singing of the words of prayers, or rules, the outward celebration of worship and simply being present at it - but without prayer itself, that is, without turning to God with attention, reverence and contrition of the heart, as a result of which the worship services themselves and prayer rules remain for man with empty, inactive words. In this way we deceive ourselves.

Everyone knows how it is possible, without praying, to stand in the temple, listen to the choir, dream, sin in thoughts and return home with this full box of sin and emptiness of the heart. The Lord denounced such an attitude towards prayer: “These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their tongue, but their heart is far from Me; but in vain they worship Me, teaching doctrines, the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:8).

So, when a person dies, very often his relatives are limited only to the external side of the commemoration: they order memorial services, magpies, serve memorial notes, light candles, give money to monasteries, temples, etc. But you need to know that if I myself At the same time, I will not strike a finger to pray for my deceased, and I will not refrain from anger, slander, condemnation, gluttony, etc., to force myself to confession and communion, to read the word of God and the Holy Fathers, to help the needy, the sick , then there will be no use from all these orders. We want to easily (over ourselves) take the fish out of the pond, without the slightest feat of fighting with our old man, we hope to repair the dilapidation of the deceased. And, alas, we call this a commemoration, a prayer for him! We hope that somewhere someone will pray for the deceased instead of me. But will they pray there, or will they only name names?

One external form of commemoration, including liturgical ones, without forcing oneself to real prayer (and not idle talk), to life according to the commandments, is self-deception, leaving the deceased without any help. The Holy Scripture directly speaks of this: “If thou wouldst have desired sacrifices, thou wouldst have given them, but thou wouldst not be pleased with burnt offerings. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit, a contrite and humble heart God will not despise” (Ps. 50; 18:19).

That is, only from a contrite and humble heart does God accept sacrifices, gifts, and commemorations. Otherwise, He does not favor: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that you give tithes from mint, anise and cumin, and left the most important thing in the law: judgment, mercy and faith; this was to be done, and that not to be left behind” (Matt. 23:23). You see with what threat the Lord warns: “Woe to you, hypocrites,” if you limit yourself to “tithe”, that is, only external deeds, and leave the purification of your soul.

Protestants, by the way, rejected prayers for the dead. The Orthodox Church teaches that the state of the soul, which after death finds itself in the bonds of passion demons, can be changed. After all, for whom does the Church call to pray? For sinners, not for saints. How to pray? To this the Lord directly answered the disciples who did not cast out the demon from a person: “This kind is cast out only by prayer and fasting” (Matt. 17; 21). With this, He revealed a great truth: the liberation of a person from slavery to demons and passions requires not only prayer, but also fasting, which means a feasible struggle with the insatiable sinful lusts of the soul and body, forcing oneself to at least a minimal feat.

Therefore, if someone really wants to help his deceased - the one whom he sincerely loves, then there is a means, and it is in our hands - give, man, a particle of your soul, a particle of your habitual, sinful, spiritually passive life. Take on at least a small feat. Live in a feasible abstinence of the body, passionate feelings and thoughts, in forcing yourself to prayer, to reading the word of God. Try to make peace with your enemies. Do good to those who hate you - according to the commandment of God. Try not to judge, not to envy, not to respond to evil with evil, confess more often and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Purify at least a little your soul, although for a short time pull yourself together - for the sake of a person dear to you. All this will be an invaluable gift to the deceased. It is not necessary to look for revelations about the fate of the deceased, but to have at least some faith in the Church, which offers effective means of helping him.

A person is mortal... And this is a guarantee that absolutely every person in his life thinks about his future death and decides for himself whether something awaits him there - beyond the grave.

Often, the answers to the question, which a person determines for himself as true in relation to the future life, also depend on how he will live the current time measured by God for him.

Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexei Ilyich Osipov, whose words we are publishing today, answered very well the nine questions of Orthodox Christians about the phenomenon of death and the subsequent afterlife:

  1. What is death?

Oh, if someone could answer this! I remember from childhood, in our house, above the door to the room, there was a picture “No one will escape this”, which depicted her, bony with a scythe. It was both interesting and scary. But even then this uncomplicated plot laid in the child's subconscious the most important questions for a person: what is death, why do I live?

How does Christianity respond to them? It speaks of the dual nature of man. Its most important part, subtly material, as our hierarchs Ignatius (Brianchaninov) and Theophan the Recluse (who admitted this at the end of his life) write about it, is the soul, which has three levels. The highest level inherent only to man is the spirit (or mind), the carrier of self-consciousness, personality. He is immortal. The other two levels - sentient and plant-nourishing - are common with the animal and plant world and often together with the body are called the flesh, or the soul body, as the apostle Paul wrote: There is a soul body, there is a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:42-44) . This soul body, or flesh, dies and decays along with the biological body. Death is a gap between the spirit and the flesh, or, more simply, between the soul and the body. And only faith in immortality gives a full answer to the question: why do I live? Dostoevsky especially emphasized the importance for a person of faith in immortality: "Only with faith in one's own immortality does a person comprehend his entire rational goal on earth."

  1. What happens to a person's soul in the first forty days after death?

After the death of the flesh, the human soul passes into the world of eternity. But the category of eternity is indefinable in terms of time, it refers to those simple things about which the ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote that “simple things cannot be defined.” Therefore, the church tradition is forced to answer this question in the language in relation to our consciousness, immersed in the stream of time. In church tradition there is an interesting answer from the angel St. Macarius of Alexandria (4th century) about what is happening with the soul these days: “... in the course of two days, the soul, along with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk the earth wherever it wants ... like a bird, looking for nests for itself ... On the third day ... every Christian soul ascend to heaven to worship the God of all.

After that, He is commanded to show the soul ... the beauty of paradise. All this is considered by the soul for six days ... After consideration ... it again ascends by angels to worship God.

After the second worship, the Lord of all commands to take the soul to hell and show it the places of torment located there ... The soul rushes through these various places of torment for thirty days ... On the fortieth day, it again ascends to worship God; and then the Judge determines a proper place for her according to her deeds.

These days, the soul, as it were, passes exams for good and evil. And they, of course, can be delivered differently.

  1. Ordeal - what is it, and why are they called that?

The word "mytnya" means a place where duties were levied, taxes and fines were collected. In the church language, the word "ordeal" expresses a kind of investigation carried out from the ninth to the fortieth day after the death of a person in the matter of his earthly life.

Ordeals are usually called twenty. They are distributed according to passions, each of which includes many corresponding sins.

In the life of, for example, St. Basil the New, blessed Theodora tells about them in the following order:

1) idle talk and foul language,

3) condemnation and slander,

4) gluttony and drunkenness,

5) laziness,

6) theft,

7) love of money and stinginess,

8) extortion (bribery, flattery),

9) untruth and vanity,

10) envy,

11) pride,

13) rancor,

14) robbery (beating, hitting, fighting...),

15) witchcraft (magic, occultism, spiritualism, divination ...),

17) adultery,

18) sodomy,

19) idolatry and heresy,

20) mercilessness, hardness of heart.

All these ordeals are described in life in vivid images and expressions, which are often mistaken for reality itself, giving rise to distorted ideas not only about the ordeals, but also about heaven and hell, about spiritual life and salvation, about God Himself. Therefore, shegumen John of Valaam wrote: “Although our Orthodox Church has accepted the story of Theodora’s ordeals, this vision is a private human one, and not Holy Scripture. Go deeper into the Holy Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles.” And Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) explains: “It is clear to everyone, except for children, that the concept of “ordeal” cannot be taken literally; this is a metaphor that the Eastern Fathers considered suitable for describing the reality that the soul encounters after death ... But the stories themselves are not “allegories” or “fables”, but true stories about personal experience, presented in the language most convenient for the narrator ... In the Orthodox there is no paganism, no occultism, no “Eastern astrology”, no “purgatory” in the stories about ordeals.

About the reason for such an inadequate description of that world by St. John Chrysostom notes that "it is said so in order to bring the subject closer to the understanding of more rude people."

In this regard, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow (XIX century) warns: “... one must firmly remember the instruction that the angel gave to the Monk Macarius of Alexandria ... about ordeals: “take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly things.” It is necessary to represent the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but as much as possible for us in a spiritual sense, and not to become attached to particulars, which in different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, with the unity of the main idea about the ordeals, appear different.

An interesting explanation of what is happening at the ordeals is offered by St. Feofan (Govorov): “... ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of being terrible, represent something charming. Seductively charming, according to all kinds of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When, in the course of earthly life, the passions are expelled from the heart and the virtues opposite to them are planted, then no matter how beautiful you imagine, the soul, having no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not purified, then to which passion it sympathizes most, the soul rushes there. The demons take her like friends, and then they know what to do with her ... the soul itself rushes to hell.

But ordeal is not something inevitable. They passed (according to the word of Christ: today you will be with me in paradise - Luke 23:43) The prudent thief, the souls of the saints ascended to heaven in the same way. And any Christian who lives according to his conscience and sincerely repents, thanks to the Sacrifice of Christ, is freed from this “examination”. For the Lord Himself said, He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me will not come into judgment (John 5:24).

  1. Why should we pray for the dead?

The apostle Paul wrote amazing words: you are the body of Christ, and individually the members. Therefore, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it (1 Cor 12:27, 26). All believers, it turns out, make up one living organism, and not a bag of peas, in which peas push each other, and even hit each other painfully. Christians are cells (alive, half-dead, half-dead) in the Body of Christ. And all mankind is one body. But just as every change in the state of an individual organ or cell responds to the whole organism and to any of its cells, so does it in human society. This is the universal law of our being, which opens the veil over the mystery of prayers for the dead.

Prayer in its action is the door for the entry into the soul of the grace of Christ. Therefore, a prayer performed with attention and reverence (and not meaningless subtraction), while cleansing the one who prays, has a healing effect on the deceased. But one external form of commemoration, even liturgical, without the prayer of the person praying himself, without his life according to the commandments, is nothing more than self-deception, and leaves the deceased without help. Saint Theophan frankly wrote about this: “If no one [from relatives] breathes from the heart, then a prayer service will be cracked, but there will be no prayer for the sick. The same goes for the proskomidia, the same for the mass... For those who serve, a prayer service does not come to mind to cheer before the Lord with the soul of those who are commemorated at the prayer service... And where can they get sick of everyone ?!

Prayer is especially effective when it is combined with achievement. The Lord answered the disciples who failed to cast out the demon: This kind is cast out only by prayer and fasting (Mt 17:21). By this, He pointed to the spiritual law, according to which the liberation of a person from slavery to passions and demons requires not only prayer, but also fasting, that is, a feat of both body and soul. St. Isaac the Syrian wrote about this: “Any prayer in which the body did not bother and the heart did not grieve is imputed as one with the premature fetus of the womb, because such a prayer does not have a soul in itself.” That is, the effectiveness of prayer for the deceased is directly conditioned by the degree of sacrifice and the struggle with the sins of the person praying, the degree of purity of his cell. Such a prayer can save a loved one. For the sake of this, in order to change the posthumous state of a person, it is carried out by the Church from the very beginning of its existence!

  1. What is God's judgment, is it possible to be justified on it?

Are you asking about the Last Judgment, which is often called the Last Judgment?

This is the last act in the history of mankind, opening the beginning of his eternal life. It will follow the general resurrection, in which the entire spiritual and bodily nature of a person will be restored, including the fullness of the will, and, consequently, the possibility of a person’s final self-determination - to be with God or leave Him forever. For this reason, the Last Judgment is called the Last Judgment.

But Christ at this trial will not turn out to be the Greek Themis - the blindfolded goddess of justice. On the contrary, the moral greatness of His feat on the Cross, His unchanging love, will be revealed to every person in all its strength and obviousness. Therefore, having the sad experience of earthly life and its “happiness” without God, the experience of “examinations” at ordeals, it is difficult to imagine that all this did not touch, or rather, did not shock the hearts of resurrected people and did not determine the positive choice of fallen humanity. In this, at least, many Church Fathers were convinced: Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Epiphanius of Cyprus, Amphilochius of Iconium, Ephraim the Syrian, Isaac the Syrian and others. They wrote about the same thing that we hear on Holy Saturday: "Hell reigns, but does not live forever over the human race." This idea is repeated in many liturgical tests of the Orthodox Church.

But, perhaps, there will be those whose bitterness will become the essence of their spirit, and the darkness of hell will become the atmosphere of their life. God will not violate their freedom either. For hell, according to the thought of St. Macarius of Egypt, is located "in the depths of the human heart." Therefore, the doors of hell can only be locked from the inside by its inhabitants themselves, and not sealed by the archangel Michael with seven seals so that no one can get out of there.

I write about this in some detail in my book From Time to Eternity: The Afterlife of the Soul.

  1. What is a paradise in which there will be survivors?

And what would you answer the question: what is seven-dimensional space? Picasso, for example, tried to draw a violin in four dimensions and ended up with an abracadabra. So all attempts to depict heaven (and hell) will always be the same violin by Picasso. Only one thing is truly known about paradise: no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no one has entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9). But this is the most general characteristic of paradise in the rendering of our three-dimensional language. And in essence all his descriptions are only the weakest representations of the things of heaven.

We can only add that it will not be boring there. Just as lovers can endlessly communicate with each other, so those who are saved in paradise will be immeasurably more saved in eternal joy, pleasure, happiness. For God is Love!

  1. What is the hell that the dead go to?

Thank God, I don't know him yet and don't want to know, because in the biblical language knowledge means unity with the knowable. But I heard that it is very bad in hell, and that it is also “in the depths of the human heart”, if there is no paradise in it.

A serious question is connected with hell: are hellish torments finite or endless? Its complexity lies not only in the fact that that world is closed from us by an impenetrable veil, but also in the impossibility of expressing the concept of eternity in our language. We know, of course, that eternity is not an infinite duration of time. But how to understand it?

The problem is further complicated by the fact that Holy Scripture, the Holy Fathers, and liturgical texts speak of both eternity and the end of the torment of unrepentant sinners. At the same time, the Church at its councils has never condemned any of the Fathers of either one or the other point of view. Thus, she left this question open, pointing out its secret.

Therefore, Berdyaev was right when he said that the problem of hell "is the ultimate mystery that cannot be rationalized."

Of course, it is difficult not to pay attention to the thought of St. Isaac the Syrian:

“If a person says that only in order to show His long-suffering, He puts up with them [sinners] here, in order to mercilessly torment them there - such a person thinks inexpressibly blasphemous about God ... Such ... slanders Him. " But he also warns: “Let us beware in our souls, beloved, and understand that although Gehenna is subject to limitation, the taste of being in it is very terrible, and beyond our knowledge is the degree of suffering in it.”

But one thing is certain. Since God is love and wisdom, it is obvious that for each person eternity will correspond to his spiritual state, his free self-determination, that is, it will be the best for him.

  1. Can the posthumous fate of a person change?

If it had not been possible to change the spiritual state of the soul there, then the Church would not have called from the very beginning of its existence to pray for the departed.

  1. What is the general resurrection?

This is the resurrection of all mankind to eternal life. In the aftermath of Good Friday matins we hear: "deliver us all from the bonds of death by thy resurrection." The doctrine of this is the most important thing in the Christian religion, for only it justifies the meaning of a person's life and all his activities. The Apostle Paul even writes thus: If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen, and if Christ has not risen, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain. And if in this life alone we hope in Christ, then we are more unfortunate than all men (1 Cor 15:13-14, 19). He also tells how it will happen: suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed (1 Cor 15:52).

And here is what Saint Isaac the Syrian writes about the power of the resurrection in his famous “Words of the Ascetics”: “A sinner is not even able to imagine the grace of his resurrection. Where is hell that could grieve us? Where is the torment that frightens us in many ways and overcomes the joy of His love? And what is Gehenna before the grace of His resurrection, when He raises us from hell, makes this corruptible put on incorruption, and raises the one who fell into hell in glory? ... There is a recompense for sinners, and instead of a righteous retribution, He repays them with a resurrection; and instead of corruption of the bodies that have trampled on His law, He clothes them in the perfect glory of incorruption. This mercy is to resurrect us after we have sinned, beyond mercy to bring us into being when we did not exist.”

In contact with

Statement: It is traditionally believed that one should pray for the unbaptized martyr Huar, who, after his death, begged from hell the unbaptized relatives of the woman who honored him.

Alexey Ilyich Osipov, Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, answers:
- First of all, the Church does not know such a tradition. It's just a popular belief. Although history has preserved several reports of such cases. The well-known Russian liturgist, Holy Bishop-Confessor Athanasius (Sakharov), in relation to prayers for non-Orthodox Christians, wrote:
“Regarding the commemoration of your deceased parents. First of all, I believe that children are always obliged to pray for their parents, whatever they may be, even if they are monsters, blasphemers and persecutors of the faith. I am sure that St. Martyr Varvara prays for her father, who killed her.
If the prayer of Rev. Macarius of Egypt about the pagans gave them some joy, all the more so the prayer of Orthodox children will bring joy to non-Orthodox parents.
At the request of the pious Empress Theodora, the Fathers of the Church made intense prayers for her husband, Theophilus, an ardent iconoclast and persecutor of Orthodoxy, and received a revelation that through their prayer and through Theodora’s faith, forgiveness was granted to Theophilus.
Therefore, even the Holy Synod approved a special rite of memorial service for the departed non-Orthodox. It was started by printing in 1917, but not completed. In 1934 or 1935 Met. Sergius sent to the dioceses the rite of requiem composed by him for the non-Orthodox.
Moreover, St. Athanasius believed that when submitting a commemoration book for a memorial service, the names of non-Orthodox can be put among the Orthodox, and if these names are foreign, then, in order not to embarrass people, change them to consonant importhodox ones (“for example, instead of “Ancia” - “Andrey”). “The Lord,” he wrote, “who knows for whom you are praying, precisely to the person you had in mind, will show mercy according to your prayer.” However, regarding the commemoration at the Proskomedia, he reasoned as follows: “Earlier, I also commemorated the non-Orthodox at the Proskomedia, but now I have come to the conclusion that it is better not to do this.”
So the point is not in the martyr Ouar and not in his temple. The Church always prays for everyone, regardless of whether they are baptized or unbaptized, believers or non-believers. For the basic truth of Orthodoxy is that God is love. Therefore, Christ commands us to pray for enemies.
"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, do good to those who offend you." And from the cross He prayed for His crucifiers: “Father, hold them not in sin. They don't know what they're doing." And the First Martyr Stefan, when he was stoned, prayed for his murderers: “Lord, do not make this a sin for them.”
And the second. When the disciples of Christ did not let babies come to him, he became indignant and said: “Let the children come to me. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." What kind of "those"? Baptized? No, there was no sacrament of baptism then. And more than that, He added, "Unless you are like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." It turns out that the condition of salvation is not baptism itself, but the childish purity of the soul, without which, even with baptism, “you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
And look who baptized the apostles? The baptism of John is not the sacrament of Baptism at all. And that the Lord baptized his apostles, nothing is said about this anywhere. And who baptized the prudent robber? But Christ said: "Today you will be with me in Paradise."
This also needs to be remembered in order to properly relate to baptism.
It is not a pass to heaven, without which entry is prohibited. The Lord said:
"He who does not have faith will be condemned." "Faith" - that is, a righteous life.
Therefore, many baptized, but denying Christ by their lives, will perish, and many unbaptized, starting with the people of the Old Testament, living righteously, will be saved. Nowhere does the Lord say: whoever is not baptized will perish. On the other hand, many times He condemned the Pharisees, hypocrites, scribes, lawyers, and others, who are no less numerous even after the coming of Christ.

The departure of a person from life is always a difficult test for loved ones. How to deal with the pain of loss? How to prepare the deceased for burial? How to carry out the last journey? How to remember later? In the book, one of the authors of which (priest Pavel Gumerov) serves in the church of St. Nicholas at the Rogozhsky cemetery, you will find detailed instructions on all the details of an Orthodox burial, as well as pastoral advice and words of support. Attached are letters of consolation from St. Theophanes about the hour of death and the prayers that it is customary to read in the Orthodox Church, seeing off the neighbor on the path of all the earth. 2nd edition, revised and enlarged.

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by the LitRes company.

ORTHODOX BURIAL RITE

Parting words of a dying Orthodox Christian


WITH The holy Church prepares her children for the last journey of earthly life, admonishing them with the holy Sacraments. The Sacrament of Confession, Unction and Communion must be performed over a dying Orthodox person.

It should be remembered that all these Sacraments must be performed when a person is conscious. It is impossible to postpone parting words until the last minute. If a person is in a serious illness, you should immediately call a priest to him.

At the death of an Orthodox Christian, in order to facilitate the transition of his soul to eternity, a waste is read - Canon of Prayer to Our Lord JesusChrist and the Most Pure Mother of God<…>when the soul is separated from the body of every true believer 1 . If it is not possible to invite a priest to perform a funeral service, the service is read by an Orthodox layman, with the exception of the last prayer, which is read only by the priest2.

If the dying person suffers for a long time and his soul cannot leave the body, the priest performs another following: The rite that happens when the soul is separated from the body, when a person suffers for a long time. (In the absence of a priest, the following is read by an Orthodox layman3. In the book, both followings are given in a form intended for reading by the laity. - Ed.)

Over the long-dying dying, or “The Canon of Prayer ...”, is read more than once, especially if there is no clergyman nearby.

After the departure of the soul from the body, the washing of the body and dressing it in funeral clothes, the priest performs Following the Exodus of the Soul from the Body 4 . (If for some reason the Follow-up cannot be performed by the priest, it must be read by the reader of the Psalter before the reading of the Psalter itself begins. In the appendix, the Follow-up is given in a form intended for reading by the laity. Canon for the deceased, included in Follow-up on the outcome of the soul.., it is desirable to read daily, up to the burial of the deceased. - Ed.)

Preparation for burial

T the body of the Orthodox deceased must be prepared in a special way for the position in the coffin. It is washed with water, as a sign that it must appear before God in purity and purity. (The whole body must be washed. Warm water is used. When washing, the Trisagion is read: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us” - or simply: “Lord, have mercy.” - Ed.) Then the deceased is dressed in clean new clothes, as a sign that our bodies will be renewed after the resurrection on the day of the Last Judgment. On the chest, of course, there should be a pectoral cross.

Until the coffin is ready, the washed and clothed body rests on a table (or on a bench, or on knocked down boards laid on stools. - Ed.), then placed in a coffin. Hands on the chest should be folded crosswise, as a sign of faith in Christ crucified, the right hand should be on top. Hands before being transferred to the church can be tied if they fall apart. The eyes and mouth of the deceased(s) must be closed. A special church chaplet is placed on the forehead. A pillow is placed under the head. The whole body is covered with a burial veil (veil with the image of the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. - Ed.). Both the whisk and the veil can be purchased at the church. The icon of the Savior or the Mother of God is placed on the chest. It is unacceptable to put foreign objects in the coffin with the deceased (s): money, food, personal items, etc. This is gross superstition.

In the room where the body of the deceased (s) is located before being taken out of the house, a lamp or a candle must constantly burn 6 . (If possible, they put four candlesticks: one at the head, the other at the feet and two on the sides of the coffin; together they form a cross. According to tradition, the body of the deceased is at home on the first night, and in the temple on the last night before burial. - Ed.)

Reading the Psalter for the deceased

WITH There is a pious Orthodox custom to read Psalter Iri after a deceased layman, monk and deacon. (At the tomb of the bishop and priest, the Gospel is read.) The Psalter is read both before burial - over the body of the deceased (s), and after the funeral. (For example, until the 40th day. – Ed.) Reading psalms is a prayer for the soul of the deceased (s) and comforts the heart of grieving relatives and friends.

This custom is very ancient and comes from the first centuries of Christianity. The Menaion of the Lord tells that the apostles spent three days in psalmody at the tomb of the Mother of God.

Each kathisma is preceded by "Come, let us worship..."

After the 1st and 2nd “Glory”, the prayer “Remember, Lord our God ...” is read, located at the end of the “Following the Exodus of the Soul from the Body”7 with the name of the deceased (s).

The kathisma is concluded by the “Thrice Saints” according to “Our Father ...”, then instead of the usual troparia, the troparions of the deceased are read “With the spirits of the righteous who have died ...” 8, then the prayer laid down for each kathisma.

(Each time after reading the entire Psalter, the “Canon for the Reposed” is read for the deceased, which is part of the “Following the Exodus of the Soul from the Body” 9. - Ed.)

Until the 40th day, the word is added to the name of the deceased newly deceased.

Removal of the body

IN the removal of the body of the deceased (s) is, if possible, carried out with the participation of a priest. Before the removal, a funeral litia is served - from the Greek “strengthened prayer”. After the Litiya, the coffin with the body of the deceased (s) is taken out face forward (with the singing of the “Trisagion”. – Ed.) to the church for the funeral. (Since ancient times, Christians who participated in the funeral procession carried lighted candles. - Ed.)

funeral service

P The Orthodox Church, as a loving Mother, takes care of all her children, both those who live on earth and those who have already passed away into eternity. At the Divine Liturgy, both the living and the departed are commemorated by name, for with God all are alive. On those days of Great Lent, when the Liturgy is not served, we pray "for our fathers and brothers who have departed." On the feast of Easter, when there are no requiems and funerals, the dead are commemorated at the proskomedia.

Of course, the transition of a Christian into eternal life is also accompanied by consolatory church prayers and hymns. This is, as it were, the last service of a person in the temple, among people close to him, farewell to them. The funeral service is performed on the third day, for for three days the soul of the deceased is still with us, on earth, and on the third day it goes to God.

The funeral service should be performed (if possible) in the temple. After all, a temple is a place where every Orthodox Christian goes in his earthly life to pray and meet with the Lord. The temple is the house of God, but also the home for every Orthodox.

The coffin with the body of the deceased is placed in the middle of the church. The deceased lies with his head to the west, and his face (not covered with a funeral veil. - Ed.) faces east, towards the iconostasis.

All those present should remember that the funeral service is not only a sacred act performed by a priest, but also a common prayer of the relatives of the deceased that the Lord forgive him all voluntary and involuntary sins and accept his soul in peace. Therefore, the worshipers are also facing east, towards the iconostasis. The candles that they hold in their left hand in order to make the sign of the cross with their right is a symbol of their fervent prayer for the deceased, aspiring upward to God.

At the beginning of the funeral, the 17th kathisma is read. The Holy Text especially emphasizes that during earthly life a person must prepare for eternity, walk in the ways of truth and the commandments of God, and this serves as a reminder to all of us living of constant attention to our souls, because death, as the proverb says, " not far off, but behind. The last words of the 17th kathisma: Lost like a lost sheep: seek a slaveYours, as if I had not forgotten Your commandments,- they sound as if from the face of the deceased himself: “Although I have sinned immeasurably before You, Lord, I have lost my way, I am confused, but I believe in Your mercy and love for me!”

The canon for the exodus of the soul, which is read by the priest at the funeral, is also filled with hope for God's mercy to the deceased and calls for the prayerful help of the Most Holy Theotokos and the holy martyrs. The martyrs were not afraid to die for Christ, and by this they showed that there is no need to be afraid of death – it unites us with God.

After the 6th ode of the Canon, the kontakion is sung: “With the saints, give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant, where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing, but endless life.” If a Christian labored on earth for the sake of the Lord, endured illnesses, hardships, hardships with humility, we ask that his soul, along with the holy ascetics, be instilled in a place where there will no longer be sadness and sorrows.

After the kontakion, the choir sings a hymn called ikos, which tells that man, as created by God from the earth (“as the earth you are, and into the earth you have gone”), must return back to the earth, that is, be buried. This is God's command given to Adam after the fall. The Lord says that man will labor in earthly life until he returns to the earth from which he was taken (cf. Gen. 3:19).

Sin is committed by those people who betray the bodies of their dead to the fire. This custom is incompatible with Orthodoxy. It is inherent, for example, in Hinduism, where the body is considered the dungeon of the soul and must be destroyed. For us, according to the word of the Apostle body< …>essence temple Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and the human body is, as it were, carefully preserved for the day of the Last Judgment, when it rises from the dust and unites with the soul. Therefore, the body of an Orthodox Christian cannot be burned. (In Russia, the burning of bodies began to be introduced only after 1917. - Ed.)

At the funeral, the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:13–17) and the Gospel of John (John 5:25–30) are read.

These readings are very comforting to the soul grieving over the death of a loved one. The Apostle Paul writes: I do not want to leave you, brethren, in ignorance of the dead, so that you do not grieve like others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then God will also bring those who die in Jesus with Him.(1 Thess. 4:13-14). There is no death, it is defeated by Christ risen.

The Gospel of John tells us about the future resurrection of the dead on the day of God's Judgment.

After reading the Gospel, a permissive prayer is read over the deceased, printed on a separate sheet. After reading, the sheet is folded and placed in the right hand of the deceased. Regarding this prayer, some have formed a completely wrong opinion that reading it allows a person to all his sins, regardless of whether he repented of them during his lifetime or not. Here is what the “Handbook of a Clergyman” writes about this (M., 1983, vol. 4, p. 484, edition of the Moscow Patriarchate): repented before the confessor, but not those sins that they concealed and which they did not repent of in the Sacrament of Penance. Therefore, this prayer cannot be considered equal in strength to the permissive prayer of the Sacrament of Penance: “I forgive and allow you ...” Repentance is the business personal, we can only pray for the forgiveness of the voluntary and involuntary sins of the deceased (s).

When the choir sings the touching stichera “Come, let us give the last kiss to the brethren who have died ...”, the farewell of relatives and friends begins with the deceased (s). We say goodbye to a dear person close to us, we ask forgiveness for all the insults and troubles that, perhaps, he suffered from us in life, and we dare to believe that, if the Lord deigns, then we will meet already there, in eternity. It is necessary, of course, to let a person go on his last journey, forgiving and his heartily. In the face of eternity, any grievances seem absurd, petty.

Everyone who says goodbye to the deceased (s), come in turn from the right side to the body, kiss the icon placed on the chest, and the rim on the forehead.

The icon after parting with the deceased (s) remains in the coffin. (If an icon from the home iconostasis is used during burial, for example, an old, painted one, then after parting it can be returned to its place. - Ed.) The custom of leaving the icon in the temple until the 40th day has no basis.

After parting, the body with the head is covered with a veil and the priest crosswise, with the words "The Lord's land and its fulfillment, the universe and all who live in it," sprinkles it with earth. The coffin is closed with a lid, nailed up and taken out (feet first) from the temple.

If a priest is present at the cemetery, a lithium is served before burial. (In this case, the coffin is closed and boarded up in the cemetery. - Ed.) In the grave of the deceased (th) is placed facing the east. From deep pre-Christian antiquity, there is a custom to mark the place of burial with a hill above it. The Christian Church, having adopted this custom, adorns the grave mound with a victorious sign of our salvation: on the grave, at the feet of the buried, it is installed (or depicted on the tombstone. - Ed.) an Orthodox cross (so that the Crucifixion is turned to the face of the deceased. - Ed.). When the coffin is lowered into the grave, the Trisagion is sung. Then all those present take turns throwing a handful of earth on the coffin. The priest throws first.

Wake (funeral meal)

After the completion of the burial ceremony, relatives and friends of the deceased are invited to share a common meal in memory of the deceased (s). The pious custom of a memorial meal comes from antiquity. The meal is offered to strengthen strength after a hard day, in order to pray again for the deceased (s), having gathered together at the memorial table (prayer is the main purpose of the memorial meal. – Ed.) and remember his good qualities and deeds (hence the name - commemoration. - Ed.).

The funeral table is also an alms for the deceased, served on behalf of close relatives.

Unfortunately, one can often see how the commemoration turns into an ordinary drinking bout, where most of those present generally forget why they are gathered here, where laughter, empty, idle conversations are heard.

A Christian memorial meal should be accompanied by prayer. Our duty to the deceased(s) does not end with the burial of the body. The memory of a loved one who has passed away should last forever. How many years the Lord will give us of life, we should also pray for our departed.

In memory of the deceased (s) is placed on the table kutia. Usually it is boiled wheat with honey and raisins or boiled rice with honey and raisins. Kutia is consecrated with a special rite during the funeral service (or memorial service. - Ed.) in the church. Kutia is the first dish eaten at the wake. Putting a glass of vodka and putting a piece of bread supposedly for the deceased on the table or under the icons is a pagan, superstitious custom and unacceptable for Orthodox people. Alcoholic beverages can either be completely eliminated or severely limited so as not to give rise to inappropriate fun.

At certain moments of the commemoration, it is quite acceptable to sing church hymns for the dead.

On the first week of Great Lent and on Holy Week, one should generally refrain from commemoration. (The commemoration is postponed to the next Saturday or Sunday of Lent or is already taking place after St. Thomas Week, that is, the Sunday following Easter. - Ed.)

If the commemoration falls on multi-day fasts or on Wednesday and Friday, then fast food is prepared, on all other days - fast food.

Memorial days: 3rd, 9th and 40th. Anniversary

After the separation of the soul from the body, an independent life begins for it in the invisible world. The spiritual experience accumulated by the Church makes it possible to build a clear and coherent teaching about the afterlife of man.

In the Menaion of the Lord (January 19, or February 2, according to the new style) about the Monk Macarius of Alexandria (+ 395) is the story of his disciple: “When we walked through the desert, I saw two Angels who accompanied Saint Macarius, one on the right side , the other on the left. One of them spoke about what the soul does in the first 40 days after death: “When on the 3rd day there is an offering (prayer. - Ed.), then the soul of the deceased receives from his Angel relief in grief, which he feels from separation from the body; receives because the doxology and offering in the Church of God has been completed for her, which is why a good hope is born in her. For in the course of two days the soul, together with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk the earth wherever it wants. Therefore, the soul that loves the body sometimes wanders around the house in which it parted from the body, sometimes around the tomb in which the body is laid. < …> And the virtuous soul goes to those places where it used to do the right thing. On the 3rd day, He Who rose from the dead on the third day, the God of all, commands, in imitation of His resurrection, that every Christian soul ascend to Heaven to worship the God of all. So, the Church has a good habit to make an offering and a prayer for the soul on the 3rd day. After worshiping God, He is commanded to show the soul the various and pleasant abodes of the saints and the beauty of paradise. All this is considered by the soul for six days, wondering and glorifying the Creator of all this - God. Contemplating all this, she changes and forgets the sorrow she had while in the body. But if she is guilty of sins, then at the sight of the pleasures of the saints, she begins to grieve and reproach herself, saying: alas! How I fussed in that world! Carried away by the satisfaction of lusts, I spent most of my life in carelessness and did not serve God as I should, so that I could also be rewarded with this goodness. < …> After consideration for six days of all the joys of the righteous, she is again ascended by the Angels to worship God. So, the Church does well, making services and offerings for the deceased on the 9th day. After the second worship, the Lord of all commands the soul to be taken to hell and to show it the places of torment located there, the different sections of hell and the various wicked torments. < …> Through these various places of torment the soul rushes about for thirty days, trembling, lest it itself be condemned to imprisonment in them. On the 40th day, she again ascends to worship God; and then the Judge determines a decent place for her in deeds. < …> So, the Church does the right thing, making commemoration of the departed and those who were baptized. The great ascetic of our time, St. John (Maximovich), writes: “It should be borne in mind that the description of the first two days after death gives a general rule, which by no means covers all situations. < …> The saints, who were not at all attached to worldly things, lived in constant expectation of the transition to another world, are not attracted even to places where they did good deeds, but immediately begin their ascent to Heaven.

There is also a pious custom to especially commemorate the deceased on each anniversary of his death, as well as annually on the name day. The most important thing to do on the days of commemoration of the deceased (s) is to pray in the church during the service and submit a commemoration for him at the Divine Liturgy (and memorial service. - Ed.) to write a note. On the days of the memory of the dead, you can visit the cemetery, clean the graves.

Immediately after the death of a person, you need to order a commemoration of him in the Church, the so-called magpie - a commemoration at the Liturgy for 40 days. Commemoration can be ordered for a longer period: six months, a year, etc.

The doctrine of ordeals

The Orthodox Church attaches great importance to the doctrine of aerial ordeals, which begin on the third day after the separation of the soul from the body. She passes through the airspace of the “outpost”, where evil spirits convict her of the sins she has committed and seek to keep her as akin to them. Saints Ephraim the Syrian, Athanasius the Great, Macarius the Great, John Chrysostom and other Fathers write about this. The soul of a person who lived according to the commandments of God and the statutes of the Holy Church, painlessly passes through these "outposts" and after the 40th day receives a place of temporary rest. It is necessary that loved ones pray in church and at home for the departed, remembering that until the Last Judgment much depends on these prayers.

According to St. John (Maximovich), the soul goes through ordeals on the third day after leaving the body: “At this time (on the third day) the soul passes through legions of evil spirits that block its path and accuse it of various sins, in which they themselves and involved. According to various revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called ordeals, at each of which this or that sin is tortured; having gone through one ordeal, the soul comes to the next. And only after successfully passing through all of them, can the soul continue its path without being immediately plunged into hell. How terrible these demons and ordeals are can be seen from the fact that the Mother of God Herself, when the Archangel Gabriel informed Her of the approach of death, prayed to Her Son to deliver Her soul from these demons, and in answer to Her prayers, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from Heaven accept the soul of His Most Pure Mother and take Her to Heaven. (This is visibly depicted on the traditional Orthodox icon of the Assumption.) The third day is truly terrible for the soul of the deceased (s), and for this reason prayers are especially needed for her.

Descriptions of ordeals in patristic and hagiographical texts fit the pattern of torture experienced by the soul after death, but individual experiences can vary considerably. Minor details such as the number of ordeals, of course, are secondary in comparison with the main fact that the soul is indeed subjected to judgment (private judgment) shortly after death, which sums up the invisible battle that it waged (or did not wage) on earth against fallen spirits. The Orthodox Church considers the doctrine of ordeals so important that it mentions them in many divine services. In particular, the Church especially expounds this teaching to all her dying children. In the Canon on the exodus of the soul, read by the priest at the bedside of a dying member of the Church, there are the following troparia: “Holy Angels, lay me to the sacred and honest hands, Lady, as if I covered myself with those wings, I don’t see the dishonorable and stinking and gloomy demons of the image”13; “Having given birth to the Lord Almighty, the bitter ordeals of the head of the world-keeper are far from me, whenever I want to die, but I will glorify Thee forever, Holy Mother of God”14.

Thus, the dying Orthodox Christian is prepared by the words of the Church for the coming trials.

The disciple of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) writes in most detail about the ordeals in the book “The Soul After Death: Modern “Posthumous” Experiences in the Light of the Teachings of the Orthodox Church” (there are many editions).

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The following excerpt from the book Everlasting memory. Orthodox burial rite and commemoration of the dead (Priest Pavel Gumerov, 2011) provided by our book partner -