God has no dead. God has everyone alive

Chapter XV. About the resurrection of the dead. In close connection with faith in the resurrection of the dead is faith in atonement (1-34). How the dead will be resurrected and in what body they will exist (35-58) 1-34 From ecclesiastical, moral and liturgical issues Ap. now comes to the dogmatic question -

God has no dead. Popular wisdom warns not to swear off scrip and prison. Who knows how life will turn out tomorrow. Who knows who you'll run into head-on when you're deep in thought and turning a corner. I also didn’t know that I would have to

Judges of the Dead In ancient Greek mythology, the dead are judged by three kings: the sons of Zeus and Europa, Minos and Rhadamanthus, as well as the son of Zeus and the river nymph Aegina named Aeacus. Zeus initially hoped to save his sons from old age and death and grant them immortality, but the Moirai

God has no dead * * *I would forget this story, just as I forgot hundreds of stories of my own and other people’s lives. But I remembered her when Jews began to appear more and more often among my friends. They didn’t decide geshefts with me, didn’t make shacher-macher and didn’t cook gefilte-fish. They didn't do anything at all

God has no dead.

Popular wisdom warns not to swear off scrip and prison. Who knows how life will turn out tomorrow. Who knows who you'll run into head-on when you're deep in thought and turning a corner. I also didn’t know that for three whole months of my life I would have to hide in a strange and unfamiliar city, and in order to live somehow, I would have to work as a loader in a vegetable store and sleep there, receiving another half-time job as a watchman. From whom and in what city I was hiding is no longer important today. There is one important feature of my life there that I want to talk about.

Two blocks from our store was the old city cemetery. No one has been buried there for a long time due to lack of space. Trees grew through the gravestones, the entire cemetery was surrounded by greenery, and I went there for a walk in the evening hours between the closing of the store and the onset of darkness. Maybe not every city in the world will have a citizen with the surname Rabinovich, but in most cemeteries in our country there will be a Jewish field. Noisy, restless, stubborn, smelling of biblical antiquity, beautiful and repulsive at the same time, the strangest people on earth scattered everywhere and left traces of their presence everywhere.

The cemetery part where the Jews were buried was located on the very edge, and I went there more often. At first I was attracted by the inscriptions on the graves and portraits of the dead. Jews who served in the Red Army were buried there. Those who believed in the revolution came out of all the cracks of the Russian province and stood under the red banner. Some of them were killed in the war, some achieved something. On their graves the inscriptions were made in Russian, and in photographs they were depicted in tunics and sword belts. These were my least favorite. We liked older people with strange, sometimes funny to our ears, names. I liked their sad eyes and long beards. I liked that their wives were lying next to each other, and it was felt that during their lives they were tender with some other tenderness, which is rare among the Slavs. Where the inscriptions were made in Hebrew, sacred interest was added to simple curiosity, and I walked for a long time among the graves of the Korfunkers and Zilbermans, the Kogans and the Katzes. Somehow it wasn’t boring and there was something to think about, although it was impossible to assume that I would come up with something special. However, I thought of it.

In the storeroom where I spent the night, there was a Gospel. I opened it from time to time anywhere and read it. I read it without understanding everything, but with pleasure. When I felt that I was full and the pleasure was over, I closed it. And then one day I was struck by the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

Don't laugh at the fact that the grocery store watchman walks into the cemetery and reads the Gospel. And God forbid you to think that this is not true. After all, I wasn’t always a watchman, and I’m not one now. During that period of time I was hiding, and there was someone to hide from. This means that I had more important things to do, and my education and status corresponded to them.

So, in the story about Lazarus and the rich man, one thought touched me, namely: the rich man in hell worries about his brothers left on earth. I knew from experience that when such a nightmare sets in in a person’s life, which we prematurely call hell, then you can stop thinking about everyone, even those closest to you. Then you just howl from mental pain or tremble for your skin. The rich man, it turns out, was good in his own way. Even after falling into an otherworldly flame, he retained concern for his relatives in his soul. Also touching was the request that Lazarus wet his finger in water and cool his tongue. It was also surprising that they recognized each other beyond the grave and that there could be long conversations between saints and sinners, between Abraham and his descendants. It was with these thoughts that I fell asleep that evening, curled up in a ball, as I love, on a stinking blue blanket.

The next evening I again wandered among Christian and Jewish graves, made my way among rusty and thorny fences, parted the thickets of ferns with my hands and thought about my problems. The thought that the Jews lying here, where I am walking now, look like the gospel rich man, and maybe some of them look like Lazarus, came to me quietly and imperceptibly. As if by itself. I didn’t even stop, I continued to walk, but this thought suddenly colored the Gospel story and even encroached on more. It has always been difficult to call me a strong believer, if only because it is not visible in life. But taught by Dostoevsky at the institute, I believed and still believe that the truth is Christ, and if the truth is not Him, then it would be better for me to be with Christ, but without the truth. The fact that the Jews did not believe in Jesus Christ seemed to me a terrible mistake and a huge tragedy. At the same time, I never had any hostility towards these people.

And then I thought: after all, there, behind the coffin, everyone recognized everyone. The people saw both Moses and Abraham. They also saw Jesus Christ, and only there they realized their mistake. Well, they are probably now asking for someone to wet their finger and cool their tongue. They are probably complaining that they were taught incorrectly, or that they themselves did not want to think about the important things, and so they spilled their life into handfuls, in every direction, and now they are suffering... They are suffering, but they don’t stop thinking about their relatives. They may not tolerate us, but they know how to love their own. Our children are either “stupid” or “blockheads,” but theirs is “Osya is always a good boy.” So, at least, I thought then and decided the following: while my life is unclear, I will come here and read the Gospel to the dead Jews.

Enough years have passed since then, but even today I am surprised by the idea of ​​that time. I wouldn't do this today. Either he would be afraid, or he would be ashamed of himself. Although today I know that I made the right decision then. I then talked a lot with priests and read various books. God has no dead. Reading the Gospel is one of the highest types of prayer. And, undoubtedly, the deceased worry about the living and want them not to repeat their mistakes.

At work everything was quiet and unnoticeable, but all sorts of things began to happen around. The wiring began to short out. Local teenage swindlers started visiting the store, and the nights were no longer calm. In addition, my stomach hurt badly and I stopped eating. But they reported from home that things were being resolved and that they would soon be able to return. Those who were looking for me began to hide themselves. The thought of home warmed me warmly.

I continued to go to the cemetery and read there mainly the Gospel of John. There are many places where the Lord addressed the Jews who surrounded him and pressed him. He sometimes scolded them, sometimes he taught them, sometimes he threatened and denounced them, but they never really understood anything. Their heads were stuffed with some thoughts of their own. But the black and white faces on the tombstones looked as if they understood everything I was reading, and this both frightened and delighted me at the same time. I read aloud, but quietly. He found a convenient place, read the chapter, then asked the dead for forgiveness for disturbing him, and walked 20 steps away to another place.

This went on for two weeks. I had already gotten used to them, to those whose names were Shlomo and Khatskel, to those on whose graves words about the grief of their relatives were written and a seven-branched candlestick was engraved. How the news came about the end of my wanderings. You could count your pocket change and, without even returning to the storeroom, run to the station to take the train home. So I did. Finally, I came to the cemetery, but didn’t read anything (the Gospel was the property of the guardhouse). I just sat under the trees, but on the Christian part. It was nice to look at the crosses and it was a pity that they were not in that part of the cemetery...

I would forget this story, just as I forgot hundreds of stories of my own and other people’s lives. But I remembered her when Jews began to appear more and more often among my friends. They didn’t decide geshefts with me, didn’t make shacher-macher and didn’t cook gefilte-fish. They didn’t do anything Jewish to me at all, but they appeared out of nowhere, talked to me about God, about Christ, about the Judgment, and then left. Some became my friends, many were baptized, I don’t even remember others by name, but over the course of several years there were many of them.

And then a clear understanding came into my heavy brains that the eyes from the tombstones were looking at me with understanding for a reason.

Jews still know how to love their own and worry about them even from hell.

Archpriest Oleg Kitov, Dean of the Bezymyansky district of Samara, answers our readers’ questions.

A misfortune happened in our family; our only son Artem, eighteen years old, died; he drowned this summer along with his friend Mikhail on Lake Vselug in the Tver region, near Malosolovetsky Island (popularly called God’s Cause). I understand that what happened was God’s providence, I try to come to terms with it. Father, I am very worried about my son’s fate in eternity. As a child, he went to church more, received communion, and received unction, and as he grew older, he went less often. Is it possible for me to find out the fate of my son? I cry very often, my husband says that I need to cry in prayer.

Olga

Probably, the grief from the loss of a child is the most terrible for the human heart and the pain from this grief is stronger than any other pain. What parent would not agree to give his life for the life of his child?! But although this loss is terrible and irreplaceable, it is still not the limit of suffering. For the unbeliever, this is the end of everything and the abyss of despair. But for the believer, in this darkness of parental suffering there is a “light at the end of the tunnel.” This light is the Light of Christ's Love. God has no dead, He has everyone alive, for He Himself is the Living God and the God of Life. In the Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is read at the funeral, the Apostle Paul exhorts us all: “I do not want you, brothers, to be ignorant about those who have died, so that you do not mourn like others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. (...) Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4: 13-14, 18).
Death is the most terrible and mysterious word for all people. Death is terrible for all living things. And all living things strive to avoid it. And no one can escape it. Having once entered the world through sin, she collects her tribute always and everywhere, and there is no barrier to her, and there would be no salvation and hope from her if not for the Death of Christ, the fruit of which is His Resurrection and Easter for all who believe in Him. Each and every one must pass through the gates of death, so that, having passed through them, as if through a cleansing fire, they will be reborn for the future eternal life. All previous generations passed through death, among whom were sinners, righteous people, old men, and infants. The Prophets of God, the Apostles of Christ, and the Most Pure Mother of God Herself passed through these gates. The Conqueror of Death, the Giver of Life, Christ Himself, also passed through death. You and I, and our loved ones, must go the same way. It is terrible for us, but we must take courage and approach this inevitable thing that awaits us, not with a sad feeling of hopelessness of the impending end, but with Christian hope for resurrection and eternal life.
As for the timing, only God determines this. Who and when to depart from this life into rebirth is decided by our Creator, Who Himself judges what will be best for the soul for its eternal destiny. Due to our limitations by nature and weakness of faith, we cannot completely overcome the grief of losing a loved one, and this prevents us from realizing that they took him away from us precisely when it was most salvific for his soul. And no matter how scary it may be for us weaklings, God’s determination rules over the life and death of a person at any age - both in infancy, and in adolescence, and in the prime of life, and in old age. And this is scary for us because we are weak, of little faith and sinners - therefore we grieve and are afraid. And we grieve especially deeply when our child dies.
In this sorrowful feeling, the believer naturally becomes concerned about the afterlife of his child. Here it is important, both in relation to death itself and in relation to the posthumous state, to show Christian trust in God. One must not worry and experience the judgments of God in relation to the soul of the deceased, but continue to show one’s love in prayer, good deeds for Christ’s sake and faith in the Good and Wise Providence of God. The Lord will never reject the prayers of parents for their child. Don’t worry too much about your son, don’t be afraid, just firmly believe in Christ and His Calvary sacrifice for all of us, both the living and the dead. Remember also the popular wisdom: “A mother’s prayer brings her out of hell,” for the Lord and the Most Pure Mother of God hear this prayer.
What about your tears, who will dare to keep you from them... But still listen to your husband and cry better in prayer, because in it they will be dissolved by the love of the Lord, and it will be easier for you. And your son’s soul will be happier there. Moreover, do not forget that, as you write, as a child he went to church and received communion, so rest assured that the Lord will not forget this, and a child’s prayer, even once spoken, will not be lost for God in eternity.
Don’t be tormented by looking for opportunities to know your son’s fate. Here the enemy can lead you into temptation and delusion. He can present to you the fate of his son as unenviable and thereby plunge you into despair and mental anguish much greater than that now, thereby enjoying your suffering. And if it succeeds, then it will deprive you of your faith. Or, on the contrary, he will show you the fate of his son as a kind of bliss that does not need prayers and alms. And this can negatively affect the afterlife state of his soul. Trust God, pray unremittingly and have faith.
May the Holy Spirit comfort you, Olga, and your wise spouse with the hope of an obligatory meeting in the future life with your child through the mercy of Christ and the intercession of the Queen of Heaven.

Traditionally, in the spring days before Easter, people are interested in a rather delicate topic that is not often touched upon by newspapers - the topic of cemeteries. Today we are talking about this with a person well known to our regular readers - publicist and public figure A.V. SHCHIPKOV. - Alexander Vladimirovich, is Easter on May 5 considered late?

Yes, this year we have a late Easter and a long winter - there was snow until the end of April. But by Radonitsa the cemeteries are always dry, people begin to tidy up the graves and put the cemetery in order. This is a very good tradition, indicating that the memory of the dead is very important. Moreover, it is important in different senses. Firstly, it is respect for ancestors, parents, grandparents, memory of previous generations who built our country. But there is a second component, no less, and perhaps more important - this is the religious part, which we rarely think about.

- What do you mean?

The fact is that members of the Church are both living people and those who have already died. This is the paradox of Christianity.

- Does God have no dead?

Absolutely right. And this is not just a figure of speech and not an empty phrase. The fact is that a direct connection remains between us and our deceased parents and relatives in general. People have always felt this connection: both in the pre-Christian period and in the era of Christianity. The relationship between the living and the dead is built as follows. People are sinners, and when they die, they need the help of the living. And we can really provide them with this help. We pray for them. In church we give notes “On repose”. This is not an empty ritual, these are our prayers for them, to help them in their other life. There are even certain days set aside for this - for example, Saturday is considered a memorial day. Throughout the year, there are Mother's Saturdays among Orthodox holidays. And the people remember this; on this day there are usually a lot of people in the church, everyone comes and submits notes of remembrance.

- What is this commemoration of the dead?

Their otherness is unknown to us, unfamiliar. We cannot imagine what condition they are in there. But since people are sinners and die sinners, they need our help. Just as we will need prayer help after our death. On the other hand, they also pray for us. The soul is alive! And they think about us, they worry. In difficult moments of life, who does even an old man remember? Mom! Naturally, we have the closest contact with our mother. This connection is unbreakable even after death. But this applies not only to mother and father - to all relatives in general. This connection goes both ways. And in our prayers we seem to be talking with them.

The main place of prayer is, of course, the temple. Here we all pray together, and common prayer has great power. But you can pray anywhere - at home, on the road, in the forest, and especially in the cemetery. People come here to “remember,” that is, to remember. What is this “remember”? This is prayer. They need our prayer there, not wine and cookies.

And, of course, there should be order at the grave - a visible manifestation of our attitude towards our deceased loved ones. There are very well-kept graves in cemeteries, and not necessarily with expensive monuments. They are immediately visible: a person comes, cuts the grass, sprinkles sand, and tries to somehow arrange this place. If the grave is in a neglected state, this means one of two things: either none of the relatives are left alive, or it is negligence on the part of the relatives who buried them and then do not appear. The graves are collapsing, there are lopsided crosses on them - from the day of the funeral, which eventually fall.

In this regard, the thought comes to me that we in Tarusa need to change our attitude towards cemeteries.

- How to change?

Well, look. We have two cemeteries in our city. Actually, even three. We must not forget about the cemetery on Resurrection Hill. This cemetery was liquidated. Unfortunately, there were an incredible number of such cases throughout the country! Cemeteries were destroyed, thereby destroying memory. Houses, factories, and parks were built in cemeteries. When the Resurrection Church was restored, the Orthodox collected the surviving tombstones and erected a wonderful stone worship cross. This cross, like the graves of Borisov-Musatov and the Wulf family, is all that remains from that cemetery. After all, Marina Tsvetaeva bequeathed to place the stone not just anywhere, but precisely in the cemetery, which she often wandered through as a child. A spring flows from under this cemetery into the Oka. Recently a strange trend has arisen - they hang rags, bags, and strings near this source. There is no point in this, but it looks dirty and wild. If I were the students of the 2nd school, I would take this place under guardianship and monitor the cleanliness of the source, Marin’s stone and Borisov-Musatov’s grave.

The second is the old city cemetery, which is in very good condition. Due to the fact that it is old, that many Tarusans are buried there, there are burial places of famous people, it is quite well-kept. A few years ago a chapel appeared at the cemetery. Although this old cemetery, of course, has its problems.

The third cemetery is new. While it is small, people, unfortunately, die, and it grows quite quickly, climbs the mountain, and conquers the edge of the forest. And so I noticed that at first this cemetery was strictly planned, there were neat paths. But now the cross paths have disappeared, the layout is being disrupted, and it feels like the cemetery will begin to develop spontaneously. Which is probably not very good, because the cemetery should be organized so that it is a place for walking.

- For walks?

Yes, yes! You should come to cemeteries for a walk. There is nothing strange about this. You can walk not only in parks or along embankments - you also need to go to cemeteries, and always with children, because this is a reminder to ourselves and our children about the frailty of our lives and instilling in children the memory of their ancestors. There is no need to be afraid of cemeteries! We have widespread superstitions that a cemetery is some kind of scary place, that it is better not to go there again, that children should not be taken to cemeteries, and so on. This is completely wrong! For example, I like to come to the cemetery late in the evening, at dusk.

- Why?

I'll explain. My wife and I installed lanterns on our family graves. We arrive in the evening, light candles in them, read the requiem service in a lay rite, and when we are already going to the exit, the candles in these lanterns flicker for a long, long time, as if they were seeing us off. Our family graves are at the far end of the cemetery, but the lanterns are visible even from the entrance, it’s very beautiful.

These lanterns are not just decorations. These are lamps. Just like in church, a lamp and a candle are lit as our sacrifice and our memory. We pray, put candles: on the canon - a separate table for candles - candles are placed here in memory of the dead, and on the remaining candlesticks - with a prayer for the living. The same meaning applies to lamp lamps. It’s just that it’s quite difficult to light ordinary lamps in cemeteries - there is wind and rain, but these lanterns are very convenient. The candles burn in them for three to four hours, illuminating the place.

Under Soviet rule, all this was lost, and in the old days lamps were installed in cemeteries. In village cemeteries there were special wooden structures called “birdhouses”; in cities, stone niches were made on rich graves. This is our Russian tradition, and it can be revived. And in the evening, especially on holidays, on Christmas, for example, on Radonitsa, on Trinity, even on the seemingly non-religious holiday of May 9, but associated with folk memory, these lantern lamps on graves will flicker for a long time and warm the graves. Very beautiful. It seems to me that it would be very good if we tried to revive this in Tarusa. I will note in passing that the wonderful tradition of the Eternal Flame on mass graves has the same roots and the same deeply religious meaning.

There are a number of completely ridiculous cemetery signs that I have heard. For example, they don’t go to cemeteries in winter. This is complete nonsense. The graves are covered with snow, they say - there is no need to disturb them. Indeed, I noticed that in winter few people visit cemeteries, but this is not because the dead “don’t need to be disturbed” - they are simply too lazy to take a shovel with them and clear the path to the grave. This requires some effort. But these efforts that we make to clear the snow or mow the grass in the summer are also a form of our respect for the deceased. Now we can only pray for them and at least do something physically: remove leaves, plant flowers, clear snow, etc.

What absolutely depresses me about the new cemetery is the garbage. In the old cemetery, by the way, there is more order, but in the new one... Behind there is a ravine, and all the garbage: old wreaths, bags, bottles - everything is in the ravine. Although a garbage container was installed at the cemetery, my neighbor in the cemetery - our family graves are nearby - Vasily Efremov fussed a lot about this. But the container was installed, and they threw it into the ravine. It seems to people that they threw away the bottle and no one will see it there. This is what children do - they cover their eyes with their hands and think that they cannot see them. God sees this, you can’t hide from Him. Hence the expression - “everything secret becomes clear.” This garbage is disrespectful to our dead who lie here! The entire back part of the cemetery was turned into a latrine. What then are our efforts to restore order to our graves worth? The cemetery is like one common grave of all the Tarusans buried here. Our graves are closer to the edge, we periodically remove this garbage, but we can’t even cope anymore, there’s so much of it!

And then, there is one thing - completely, in my opinion, monstrous and unacceptable. People are renovating graves, installing monuments, replacing the crosses that were temporarily placed at the time of burial. And they throw away these crosses. Throwing away the cross is blasphemous. This is a very important symbol in Christianity, because we sign ourselves with the sign of the cross, we wear the cross on ourselves. Neglect of the cross is actually very dangerous. And for those who throw it away, first of all. This is a direct outrage against Christ, over his suffering on the cross.

- What is the right thing for people to do in such cases?

Of course, under no circumstances should you throw the cross in the trash. We need to take the cross and burn it at home.

- Many people traditionally visit cemeteries on Easter, which is about to come. Others say that this cannot be done, that you can only come to Radonitsa, ten days after Easter Sunday, on the Tuesday following Bright Week. How should an Orthodox Christian approach this?

I will try to briefly explain where the tradition of not going to the cemetery on Easter, but coming to Radonitsa, came from.

Easter is the day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the greatest event that is celebrated by the people for a whole week, which is called Bright Week. The Easter prayer is sung: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tombs.” It says here that Christ gave life to all the dead, “those who are in the tombs,” that is, those lying in tombs, buried. And this week, as if there is no difference between the living and the dead, we are united in common joy, united in a common holiday. This week the dead are no longer dead, they are alive. This is the main meaning of Easter - the affirmation of the victory of life over death, the affirmation that we are all alive and will someday unite.

Therefore, no funeral services are held on these Easter days. There is no one to remember - everyone is alive and we are all together! The deepest and very joyful meaning of this main Christian holiday. This is where the folk tradition of not going to the cemetery on Easter came from. You can walk, but funeral prayers are not performed. But Radonitsa is the first day of remembrance of the dead after Easter. Radonitsa is translated as Joy. We come to the cemetery with joy from what we experienced during these Easter days. Therefore, Radonitsa is also called the Easter of the Dead.

And one more very important note. On Victory Day, by decision of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, for many years now the commemoration of “the deceased soldiers for the faith, the Fatherland and the people who laid down their lives, and all those who died painfully during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” has been commemorated. In Tarusa we serve a memorial service and remember all the dead Tarusans, we read the entire huge sad list of names near the mass grave.

This year, May 9 coincides with Bright Week, when no commemoration is performed, all the fallen soldiers will stand alive with us in the same formation. Therefore, with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill, this commemoration is moved to Radonitsa - May 14. So this Radonitsa will be special, with double joy.

And you can come to the cemetery any day of the year. There are no prohibitions. At least every day.

Archpriest Valentin Mordasov

Orthodox burial rite

The end of a person's life

How to pray for a dying person? - How to read the canon over a dying person? - Why is the waste report read?

How to Pray for a Dying Person ?

At the end of a person’s life, when he departs from this world, a special canon is read over him - a collection of songs and prayers, compiled according to a certain rule. “Canon” is a Greek word that means “rule”.

In the Orthodox prayer book this canon is called: “Canon of prayer for the separation of the soul from the body.” It is read “on behalf of a person who is separated from his soul and cannot speak” (speak), and is often called the prayer of departure (prayer).

Here are a few troparia (prayer-petitions) from this touching canon, given in translation into Russian: “My lips are silent, and my tongue says nothing, but my heart speaks, because, consuming it, the fire of contrition flares up inside me and calls in unspeakable words You, Most Holy Virgin" (canto 6); “The night of death, gloomy, moonless, befell me unprepared; it lets me, unprepared, go on a long, terrible journey. May Your mercy accompany me, O Lady” (canto 7); “Seeing the near end of my life, remembering the obscene (placeless) thoughts, actions (deeds) of my soul, I am fiercely (mercilessly) stung by the arrows of conscience. But You, All-Pure One, having mercifully bowed to my soul, be my intercessor (for me) before the Lord” (canto 9).

Prayers and petitions preceded by notes: “priest” (priest), “prayer spoken by the priest” or “therefore the priest begins” - are not read by the laity.

There are nine songs in the canon (the second song is not read). Each song contains short troparia prayers (appeals to God, the Most Holy Theotokos). The chorus indicated in the 1st song is read before them. Before the Irmos (the first prayer of each song), the chorus is not read. If before the beginning of the troparion there is “Glory,” then it should be read: “Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” if “And now” - “And now and ever and unto ages of ages.” Amen". At the end of the canon they read the prayers: It is worthy to eat. Trisagion. According to Our Father. Glory, even now. Lord, have mercy (three times).

Why is the waste report read?

At the moment of death, a person experiences a painful feeling of fear and languor. According to the testimony of the holy fathers, a person becomes afraid when the soul is separated from the body; The first three days outside the body are especially difficult for the soul. When leaving the body, the soul meets the Guardian Angel given to it at Holy Baptism, and the spirits of evil (demons). The sight of the latter is so terrible that the soul rushes and trembles at the sight of them.

Relatives and friends of the dying person need to be courageous in order to say goodbye to their loved one, try to soften with prayer not so much the physical, but the mental suffering, and make it easier for the soul to leave the body.

Burial rite

Washing and dressing the deceased. - How to pray for a person in the first days after his death. - Removal of the body. - Church funeral service. - Funeral service in absentia. - Burial.

Washing and dressing the deceased.

Not a single nation left the bodies of their dead without care, and burial was always accompanied by appropriate rites.

The holy faith of Christ forces us to look at a Christian with respect even when he lies lifeless and dead. Now the body of this Christian is the prey of death, a victim of corruption, but still he is a member of the Church of Christ. In the ruins of this once majestic temple, the life-giving Spirit of God moved, lived and acted (see: 1 Cor. 6: 15 - 19). The body of a Christian is sanctified by the communion of the Divine Body and Blood of Christ the Savior. Is it possible to despise the Holy Spirit, whose temple was the deceased? Subsequently, this dead and corruptible body of a Christian will come to life again and will be clothed with incorruption and immortality (see: 1 Cor. 15: 53). Therefore, our Orthodox Church does not leave her child without maternal care even when she has passed from this world to the distant and unknown land of eternity.

The touching rites performed by the Church over the tomb of a Christian have a deep meaning. They are based on the inspirations of the holy faith, originating from the divinely enlightened Apostles and the first Christians.

The body of the deceased is washed immediately after death. Ablution should extend to all parts of the body. Washing is performed as a sign of the spiritual purity and integrity of the life of the deceased, as well as so that he appears in purity before the face of God after the general resurrection.

You need to wash your body with warm water, but not hot, so as not to steam it. When they wash the body, they read the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us”) or “Lord, have mercy.” A lamp or candle is lit in the house and burns as long as the deceased is there.

When washing, you need to use soap, a soft cloth or sponge.

After washing, the Christian’s body is dressed in new light clothes. New clothes seem to indicate a new garment of our incorruptibility and immortality (see: 1 Cor. 15: 53). Clothes are worn according to the person's rank or service. They depict that after the resurrection a person must give an account to God of how he fulfilled his duty in what he was called to do.

If suddenly a person was not wearing a cross at the time of his death, then after washing he must put it on.

The hands and feet of the deceased are tied (they are untied before leaving the house). Hands are folded so that the right one is on top. An icon (or cross) is placed in the left hand of the deceased: for men - the image of the Savior, for women - the image of the Mother of God. It can be done this way: in the left hand - a cross, and on the chest - a holy image. This is done as a sign that the deceased believed in Christ and surrendered his soul to Him, that in life he foresaw (always had) the Lord before him, and now moves on to the blissful contemplation of Him with the saints.

When the time comes to place the deceased in a coffin, then holy water is sprinkled on the body of the deceased and the coffin inside and out. You can also cover it with incense. The body is then transferred to the coffin.

A whisk is placed on the forehead of the deceased. It is given in the church when the deceased is brought there for the funeral service. Some people buy it for themselves in advance. A deceased Christian is decorated with a crown like a fighter who has left the field of achievement with honor, like a warrior who has won a victory. On the corolla there is an image of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Most Pure Mother of God and John the Baptist with the inscription: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” This shows that the one who has completed his earthly life hopes to receive a crown for his exploits (see: 2 Tim. 4: 7 - 8) only through the mercy of the Triune God and the intercession of the Mother of God and the Forerunner of the Lord John.

A pillow, usually made of cotton wool, is placed under the shoulders and head of the deceased. The body is covered with a sheet. The coffin, as a rule, is placed in the middle of the room in front of home icons, turning the face of the deceased towards the exit.

Candles (or at least one candle) are lit around the coffin as a sign that the deceased has moved to the realm of Light - to a better, afterlife.

How to pray for a person in the first days after his death.

When the body of the deceased is washed and dressed, they immediately begin to read the canon called “The Sequence of the Exodus of the Soul from the Body.” If a person died not at home and there is no body at home, then on the day of his death this canon is still read.

Like the previous canon, the “Succession” is divided into nine cantos. Before the troparia (songs starting with a red line), the verse (chorus) is read: “Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Thy departed servant (Thy departed servant)” with the addition of the full name of the deceased.

The canon is read “for the one who died,” that is, for a person who has just died; therefore, when reading the refrain “Rest, O Lord, the soul of your departed servant,” you should not pronounce the names of recently deceased acquaintances, parents, relatives, etc. The canon is read for only one.

At the end of the “Followment” there is a special prayer appeal to God with the pronunciation of the name of the deceased: “Remember, O Lord our God, in the faith and hope of the eternal life of the departed Thy servant (Thy servant), our brother (our sister) (name) ...". After this prayer they read: “Eternal memory to Thy servant (Thy servant) (name), Lord.”

“Following” is read with the purpose that God’s mercy, through our prayer for the deceased, will ease the soul’s bitterness at parting with the body and the first moment of the soul’s stay outside the body.

Here are the prayer requests from this canon: “The deceased departed from us, placing his hope in You, Savior. But You, Lord, the Most Merciful God, grant him generous forgiveness” (5th canto); “Hear, O Holy Trinity, the words of prayer offered to You in church for the deceased, and illuminate with Your God-begotten light the soul darkened by vain attachments to earthly life” (4th canto); “One Pure and Immaculate Virgin, who gave birth to God without a seed, pray to his (the deceased) soul to be saved” (from the initial troparion).

Then, for three days, the Psalter is read over the deceased. They begin to read it with the petition: “Through the prayers of our saints, our fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen". Next, the opening prayers and those that precede the psalms are read.

The Psalter is divided into twenty large parts - into kathismas. Before each kathisma, the call to worship God is repeated three times:

“Come, let us worship our King God.

Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ Himself, our King and our God.”

After this, the kathisma is read. At the end of several psalms, separated by the word “Glory,” it is said three times: “Alleluia! (three times). Glory to You, God!” and the prayer request for the deceased from the “Succession” is repeated: “Remember, O Lord our God, in faith and hope...”. After this prayer, the reading of the psalms of the 1st kathisma continues (then the 2nd and so on).

In each kathisma, “Glory” is read three times; therefore, three times during the reading of the kathisma, an appeal to God should be made with a special request (prayer) for mercy on the deceased.

The Psalter is read continuously (day and night) over the tomb of a Christian as long as the deceased remains unburied.

Since the closest relatives of the deceased in the first three days have a lot of household worries about organizing the funeral, one of their friends or acquaintances is invited to read the Psalter. Any pious layman can read the Psalter for the deceased.

Not without reason and not without purpose, the Church from ancient times ordered the book of psalms to be read over the tomb of the deceased, and not another book of Holy Scripture. The Psalter reproduces all the diverse movements of our soul, vividly sympathizes with both our joy and our sorrow, and sheds a lot of consolation and encouragement into our grieving heart. The death of our neighbors awakens in us so many different feelings and thoughts! Reading the Psalter serves as a prayer to the Lord for the deceased and quenches the grief of loved ones for the deceased...

This book is such that anyone who prays and reads it can pronounce its words as if they were their own, which cannot be said about any other book. Therefore, when you hear the monotonous voice of a reader over the grave of a Christian, you imagine that the prayer of the inspired prophet-king David is, as it were, pronounced through the lips of the deceased himself. It is as if he himself from the grave begs the merciful God for his mercy.

Carrying out the body.

An hour or an hour and a half before the coffin is taken out of the house, the “Sequence on the departure of the soul from the body” is read once again over the body of the deceased.

The coffin is taken out of the house, turning the face of the deceased towards the exit. When carrying out the body, the mourners sing a song in honor of the Holy Trinity: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us” - to commemorate the fact that the deceased confessed the Life-Giving Trinity during his lifetime and now passes into the Kingdom of disembodied spirits surrounding the Throne of the Almighty and silently chanting The Trisagion hymn to him.

Church funeral service.

In the church, the coffin with the body of the deceased is placed in the middle of the church facing the altar and lamps are lit on four sides of the coffin.

According to the teachings of the Church, the human soul goes through terrible ordeals on the third day after death. At this time, the soul of the deceased has a great need for the help of the Church. To facilitate the transition of the soul to another life, the Psalter is read over the coffin of an Orthodox Christian, and the funeral service is performed in the church.

The funeral service consists of chants in which the entire fate of man is briefly depicted - for breaking the commandment, he again turns to the ground from which he was taken: “You yourself, the Creator and Maker of man, alone are immortal; and we are all earthly, created from the earth and will return to the same earth, as You, the Creator, commanded: you are the earth and you will return to the earth. That’s where all of us, earthlings, will go, with funeral sobs, shouting the song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”

But, despite the multitude of sins, man does not cease to be “the image of the glory of God,” and therefore the Holy Church prays to the Master and Lord, by His ineffable mercy, to forgive the deceased’s sins and to honor him with the Kingdom of Heaven; “With the saints, O Christ, rest the soul of Your servant, where there is no illness, sorrow and suffering, but life is eternally blessed.”

In order not to leave room for sadness in the suffering heart and not a single cloud of doubt that can be born in the soul at the sight of the destruction of the most beautiful of God’s creations (man), the Apostle Paul raises his consoling voice, transfers our thoughts beyond the tomb and reveals wondrous secrets to us future glorious transfiguration of the human body (see: 1 Thess. 4: 13 - 17). Finally, Jesus Christ Himself, through the lips of the priest, consoles and encourages us, sheds consolation and joy in a heart torn by grief and sadness: the funeral Gospel of John is read (see: John 5: 25 - 30).

After reading the Apostle and the Gospel, the priest reads a prayer of permission. This prayer resolves the deceased’s sins, which he repented of (or which he could not remember during repentance), and the deceased is released in peace to the afterlife. The text of this prayer is immediately placed in the right hand of the deceased by his loved ones.

The last kiss, or farewell to the deceased, is performed while singing touching stichera (prayers): “Come, brothers, let us give our last kiss to the deceased, thanking God...”. Translated from the Slavic language, this prayer sounds like this: “Come, brothers! Let us give our last kiss to the deceased, giving thanks to God. So he left his relatives and hurries to the grave, no longer caring about the vanity of earthly things and the long-suffering flesh. Where are your family and friends now? Now we are separated from him... Let us pray to the Lord to give him peace.”

Relatives and friends of the deceased walk around the coffin with the body, bowing and asking forgiveness for involuntary offenses, kissing the deceased for the last time (the corolla on his head or the icon on his chest). After this, the body is completely covered with a sheet, and the priest sprinkles it with earth (or clean river sand) in a cross shape with the words: “The Lord’s earth and its fulfillment (everything that fills it), the universe and all who live on it.” The coffin is closed with a lid, after which it is no longer opened.

When the coffin with the body is taken out of the temple, the Trisagion is sung. The face of the deceased is turned towards the exit.

Funeral service in absentia.

It often happens that the church is located far from the home of the deceased; then a funeral service is performed for him in absentia. Relatives of the deceased order a funeral service at the nearest church. After the funeral service, the relatives are given a whisk, a prayer of permission and earth (or sand) from the funeral table. At home, a prayer of permission is placed in the right hand of the deceased, a paper whisk is placed on the forehead, and after saying goodbye to him, in the cemetery, the body, covered with a sheet from head to toe, crosswise, from head to foot, from the right shoulder to the left, is sprinkled with sand so that It turned out to be a correctly shaped cross.

Burial .

In the grave, the deceased is placed facing the east, with the same thought with which we pray to the east - in anticipation of the coming of the morning of eternity, or the Second Coming of Christ, and as a sign that the deceased is moving from the west of life to the east of eternity.

When lowering the coffin with the body into the grave, the Trisagion is sung again. Before the grave begins to be buried, all those accompanying the deceased on his last journey throw a handful of earth into it. In this way, the deceased is buried in the earth as a sign of submission to the Divine determination: for dust you are, and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:19).

The cross, a symbol of salvation, rises above the grave of every Christian (it is placed at the feet). The deceased believed in the Crucified One and rests in the sleep of death under the shadow of the cross. An eight-pointed cross is placed, made of any material, but always of the correct shape.

Helping the relatives of the deceased wash him, clothe him, and pray for his repose is a pious deed. There is no need to shy away from participating in it: this is the last mercy that we can provide to the deceased.

Commemoration of the dead

The third day of remembrance for the deceased. - Ninth day. - Fortieth day. - Annual. - Why and how can our prayers be beneficial for the dead? - Commemoration at the Divine Liturgy.

The third day of remembrance for the deceased.

The Holy Church constantly prays for all “our former fathers and brothers,” but she also performs a special prayerful commemoration for each deceased, if there is our desire and need. Such commemoration is called private; it includes thirds, destinies, sorochins and anniversaries.

The apostolic tradition tells about the commemoration of the departed on the third day after death. It says that the Lord rose again on the third day; therefore, on this day we need to pray intensely to Him, remembering the deceased, that the deceased was baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the One God in the Trinity. In addition to the theological significance of commemorating the deceased on the third day, it also has a mysterious meaning concerning the afterlife state of the soul. When the Monk Macarius of Alexandria asked the Angel who accompanied him in the desert to explain the meaning of the church commemoration on the third day, the Angel answered him: “When on the third day there is a commemoration in the Church (for the soul of the deceased), then the soul of the deceased receives relief in grief from the guarding Angel which one feels from being separated from the body; receives because praise and offerings in the Church of God have been made for her, from which good hope is born in her, for for two days the soul is allowed, together with the Angels who are with it, to walk on the earth wherever it wants. Therefore, the soul that loves the body sometimes wanders around the house in which the body is laid, and thus spends two days, like a bird, looking for its nest. A virtuous soul walks through those places in which it used to do the truth. On the third day, He Who Himself rose from the dead on the third day commands, in imitation of His Resurrection, the Christian soul to ascend to Heaven to worship the God of all.”

Ninth day.

On this day, the Holy Church performs prayers and the Bloodless Sacrifice for the deceased, also according to apostolic tradition. The Monk Macarius of Alexandria, according to an angelic revelation, says that after worshiping God on the third day, the soul is commanded to show the various pleasant abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. The soul examines all this in six days, marveling and glorifying the Creator of all things - God. Contemplating all this, she changes and forgets the sorrow that she felt while in the body and after leaving it. But if she is guilty of sins, then at the sight of the pleasures of the saints she begins to grieve and reproach herself: “Woe is me! How much have I been fussy in this 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 too would be worthy of this grace and glory. Alas for me, poor one!”

After considering all the joy of the righteous for six days, the soul is again lifted up by the Angels to worship God.

Fortieth day.

The days of mourning for the dead in ancient times lasted forty days. According to the establishment of the Church, it is necessary to perform commemoration for the departed for forty days (Sorokoust), and especially on the fortieth day (Sorochin). Just as Christ defeated the devil, spending forty days in fasting and prayer, so the Holy Church offers alms and bloodless sacrifices for the deceased, asking him from the Lord for the grace to defeat the enemy, the airy prince of darkness, and receive the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Monk Macarius of Alexandria, discussing the state of the soul after the death of the body, continues: “After the secondary worship, the Lord of all commands to take the soul to hell and show it the places of torment located there, the different departments of hell and the various torments of the wicked (sinful people), in which the souls of sinners are constantly sobbing and gnashing their teeth. The soul rushes through these different places of torment for thirty days (from the ninth to the fortieth), trembling, so that it itself will not be imprisoned in them. On the fortieth day, she again ascends to worship the Lord God, and now the Judge determines the place of imprisonment appropriate for her affairs.”

What can we do for the deceased within forty days after their death? As soon as a person has died, it is necessary to immediately take care of the magpie, that is, daily commemoration during the Divine Liturgy for forty days.

If a person’s death occurs during Lent, then memorial services are ordered on Wednesday and Friday of each week, and masses for the repose of the soul of the deceased are ordered on Saturdays and Sundays. Sorokoust is not ordered during Lent, since the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated every day during this period.

During Easter week (the first week after Easter) there are no funeral services, for Easter is an all-encompassing joy for believers in the Resurrection of our Savior Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, during the entire week they do not order masses for the dead, they do not order memorial services. They begin to do this on Tuesday of St. Thomas Week (the second week after Easter). This day is called Radonitsa, because it is then that the joy of the Resurrection of Christ is proclaimed to the dead.

On the third, ninth and fortieth days, masses are ordered in the church for the repose of the deceased (at the same time his full name is called). At home, in memory of him, his relatives and friends gather for a meal in order to jointly pray for him to ask the Lord for forgiveness of sins and the repose of his soul in the Kingdom of Heaven.

It is also good to send a donation to monasteries so that they can pray for the repose of the soul of the deceased.

Annual.

The day of a Christian's death is his birthday for a new, better life. That is why we celebrate the memory of the deceased after a year has passed from the day of his death, begging the mercy of God that the Lord would be merciful to his soul, give her the desired fatherland as an eternal inheritance and make her a resident of paradise.

Not only on the anniversary of death should the deceased be commemorated, but also on the days of his earthly birth, on his name day (the day of remembrance of the saint whose name he bore). On the days of memory of the deceased, order a mass in church for his repose, pray for him at home, remember him at a meal.

Why and how can our prayers be beneficial for the dead?

Some souls, after forty days, find themselves in a state of anticipation of eternal joy and bliss, while others tremble in anticipation of eternal torment, which will intensify after the Last Judgment (the Second Coming of the Lord, during which He will judge all the living and the dead). But before this, changes in the afterlife fate of the soul are still possible, especially through offering prayers to the Church for it and doing good deeds in memory of the deceased.

The benefits of prayer, both public (church) and private (home), for souls even in hell, are described in the lives of saints and in patristic instructions.

Our prayers can act directly on the souls of the departed if they died in the right faith and with true repentance, being in communion with the Church and with the Lord Jesus Christ. In this case, despite the apparent distance from us, they continue to belong to the Church with us: to the same Body of Christ (see: Eph. 1:23; Col. 1:18). Those who died in the right faith and with true repentance transferred to another world the firstfruits of good or the seed of a new life, which they themselves did not have time to reveal here and which, under the influence of our prayers, with the blessing of God, can little by little develop and bear fruit, like a good seed in the earth under the life-giving influence of the sun.

Those who have died in wickedness and unrepentance, who have completely extinguished the Spirit of Christ within themselves (see: 1 Thess. 5:19), that is, who have rejected faith in God, are unlikely to be helped by the prayers of their still living loved ones. However, we humans cannot learn all the secrets of someone else's soul, known only to God. It happens that a person who is apparently an unbeliever actually has a spark of faith somewhere in his heart. And it is necessary to pray even for someone who, perhaps, is an obvious atheist - a person only assumes, but the Lord knows everything.

Saint Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, teaches us: “Those who are alive and who remain (on earth) believe that those who have departed and those who have died are not deprived of being, but are alive before God. The Holy Church teaches us to pray for our traveling brethren with faith and hope, that the prayers made for them are useful to them, and so we must understand about the prayers made for those who have departed from this world.”

A memorial service and home prayer for the deceased, good deeds done in his memory (alms and donations to the temple) - everything is useful for the dead. But it is especially useful for them commemoration at the Divine Liturgy . During this service, the particles taken for the living and the dead are immersed in the Blood of the Lord with the words: “Wash, Lord, the sins of those who were remembered here with Your Honest Blood, with the prayers of Your saints.” We cannot do anything better or more for the departed than to pray for them, remembering them at the liturgy. There were many apparitions of the deceased and other events confirming how useful such commemoration is for the deceased. Those who died in repentance, but failed to demonstrate it during their lifetime, are freed from torment and receive repose.

In the Church, prayers are constantly offered up for the departed, and in the kneeling prayer at Vespers on the day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit there is a special petition “for those who are kept in hell” (for those who are kept in hell).

Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, often celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the dead and said: “One prisoner, for whom his parents, who considered him dead, celebrated the Divine Liturgy three times a year (on the days of Epiphany, Holy Pascha and Pentecost), upon his release from captivity unexpectedly came home to his parents and said that on these very days a certain glorious man came to him in prison: the shackles fell from the prisoner’s feet, he became free. On other days he was again kept in chains.”

So, let us take care of those who have left us for another world, to do everything we can for them, remembering that blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy (Matthew 5:7).

How to pray on Memorial Day

The meaning of the 17th Kathisma. - How to read the 17th kathisma correctly. - Days of special remembrance of all deceased Orthodox Christians. - Private parent days.

The meaning of the 17th Kathisma.

For all forty days after the death of a person, his family and friends must read the Psalter. How many kathismas per day depends on the time and energy of the readers, but reading must certainly be daily. When the entire Psalter has been read, it is read first. Just don’t forget that after each “Glory” you need to read a prayer request for the remembrance of the deceased from “Following the departure of the soul from the body.”

Many relatives and friends of the deceased, citing the fact that they do not have time or do not have the skill to read in Church Slavonic, entrust this reading to others (readers) for a fee or other remuneration. God hears such prayer too. But the prayer will be stronger, sincere, purer if a relative or close person to the deceased himself asks God for mercy on the deceased. You should not spare time and effort in learning to read Church Slavonic and then read the Psalter yourself.

On the third, ninth and fortieth days, a special kathisma should be read for the deceased (it includes only the 118th psalm). They call it a funeral. And in liturgical books - “Immaculate,” according to the word found in its first verse: Blessed are the blameless on the way, walking in the law of the Lord.

The Jews had the following custom: during the Passover Supper and at the end of it, they sang psalms and mainly Psalm 118, dedicated to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. According to legend, Christ and his disciples left the house where the Last Supper was being celebrated, while singing a psalm, apparently exactly this: And having chanted, they went to the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:30)

Poem Blessed art thou, O Lord, teach me by thy justification(Ps. 119: 12) is always sung by the Church at the burial of the dead, and the 17th kathisma (118th psalm) is read on days of their special commemoration.

This kathisma depicts the bliss of those who walked in the law of the Lord (that is, the bliss of righteous people who tried to live according to the commandments of God). Here is a translation of some verses from this 118th Psalm: How I love Your law! I think about him all day. By Your commandment You have made me wiser than my enemies, for it is always with me. I have become more intelligent than all my teachers, for I meditate on Your revelations. I am more knowledgeable than the elders, for I keep Your commandments. I keep my feet from every evil way, to keep Your word (Ps. 119: 97 - 101).

At home it is read just like any other.

The 1st, 2nd, 12th, 22nd, 25th, 29th, 37th, 58th, 66th, 72nd, 73rd, 88th verses of the kathisma are read with the refrain: “Rest, O Lord, the soul of Your departed servant(s).”

Final verses of the first half of the kathisma (92nd, 93rd): If Thy law had not been my consolation, I would have perished in my misfortune. I will never forget Your commandments, for through them You revive me - they are sung three times. After this, the chorus is repeated again.

In the second part of the kathisma (after the word “Wednesday”) verses 94, 107, 114, 121, 131, 132, 133, 142, 153, 159- th, 163rd, 170th are read with the refrain: “Rest, O Lord, the soul of Your departed servant(s).” In conclusion, the final verses of Psalm 118 (175, 176) are sung three times: May my soul live and glorify You, and may Your judgments help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek Thy servant, for I have not forgotten Thy commandments. After them, the chorus is repeated once again with a request to rest the soul of the one for whom they are praying.

After “Glory” a prayer request is read. After the kathisma, the prescribed troparia are read (they are indicated immediately after the 118th psalm in the prayer book), and after them the 50th psalm and the troparia are immaculate, or the troparia for the repose (there are eight in total) with a refrain for each verse from the 118th psalm: Blessed Thou art, Lord, teach me by Thy justification.

Let's read these troparia (in Church Slavonic and Russian).

1) You have found the holy face of the source of life, and the door of heaven: may I also find the path of repentance; I am a lost sheep, call me, O Savior, and save me (The face of the saints has found the source of life and the door to heaven: may I also find the way there through repentance, I am a lost sheep. Savior! Call, give me a voice, find and save me ).

Chorus: Blessed are You, Lord! Teach me Your statutes.

2) He preached the Lamb of God, and was slain like lambs, and passed away to ageless, holy, and everlasting life; Pray to him diligently, martyrs, to grant us remission of debts (Holy martyrs, who preached the Lamb of God and were themselves slain like sheep, and moved to a place where life does not grow old and does not change forever, pray to Him earnestly that He would grant us forgiveness of sins).

3) You who have walked the narrow path, the sorrowful one, have taken the cross like a yoke in your life, and having followed Me in faith, come and enjoy the honors that have been prepared for you, and the heavenly crowns (You all who walked the narrow and bitter path, who during earthly life they carried the cross like a yoke, followed Me with faith! Come, enjoy the rewards that I have prepared for you, and be crowned with heavenly crowns).

4) I am the indescribable image of Your glory, even though I bear the wounds of sins: be gracious to Your creation, O Lord, and cleanse with Your compassion, and grant me the desired Fatherland, making me a paradise dweller again (Though I bear the wounds of sins, but still I - a reflection of Your glory, inexpressible in human language. Lord! Show mercy to Your creation, purify according to Your love for mankind and grant me the desired homeland, making me again a resident of paradise).

5) You created me of old from things that do not exist, and honor me in Your Divine image, but by the transgression of the commandment, you returned me to the earth from what was not taken, raise me up in the likeness of a hedgehog, to be recreated with ancient goodness (You, who at first created me from non-existence and adorned me with Your Divinely, but for violating the commandment, you who again returned me to the land from which I was taken, raise me up so that the former perfection is reflected in me).

6) Give rest, O God, to Thy servant and place him in paradise, where the faces of the saints, O Lord, and the righteous women shine like lights: give rest to Thy fallen servant, despising all his sins (God! Give rest to Thy servant and place him in paradise, where the faces saints and righteous people shine like the lights (heavenly). Lord! Give rest to the deceased servant, forgiving (regarding) all his sins).

7) The Tri-radiant One Divinity we piously sing crying out: Holy art Thou, Father Without Beginning, Co-originating Son and Divine Soul, enlighten us, who serve You with faith, and snatch up the eternal fire (Let us reverently sing with the triple light of the shining one God, crying out: “Holy are You, Father Without Beginning, and the Original Son and the Divine Spirit! Enlighten us, who serve You by faith, and deliver eternal fire."

8) Rejoice, Pure One, who gave birth to God in the flesh for the salvation of all, through whom the human race has found salvation, may we find paradise through Thee, Pure and Blessed Mother of God! (Rejoice, Pure One, who gave birth to God in the flesh for the salvation of all; You, through Whom the human race was saved! Pure, Blessed Mother of God! May we also find paradise through You).

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to Thee, O God (three times).

After these troparions, “Sequence on the departure of the soul from the body” is read.

It should be noted that in church during the requiem service the 17th kathisma is divided into two halves (articles) and it is read somewhat differently than at home.

Days of special remembrance of all deceased Orthodox Christians .

The Russian people have a custom of calling the deceased, their own and others, old and young, parents. The expression “to go to one’s parents” means to go to the graves of the dead.

The idea of ​​the dead as “parents,” that is, already belonging to the family of the fathers to whom they went, awakens in us reverence for their memory. On some days - on Saturdays - the universal commemoration of the dead is performed. These days are called parental Saturdays.

On Saturday, and not on other days, prayer for the dead is due because it is so established by the Orthodox Church: on every Saturday of the week, on the day of rest, it is customary to remember one’s deceased relatives and friends.

How to remember? Every Orthodox prayer book contains detailed prayers for the living and the dead at the end of morning prayers. Let us not be too lazy to read this small commemoration for our deceased relatives, naming their names, adding a prayer request for their repose from the “Following the Exodus of the Soul from the Body.”

The days of special (pure) remembrance of the dead are the five ecumenical Saturdays.

Meat-free parental ecumenical Saturday occurs two weeks before Lent. On this day, the Holy Church prays for all Orthodox Christians who died a sudden death: during a flood, earthquake, war, etc.

Trinity Ecumenical Parental Saturday occurs before the day of the Holy Trinity (on the 49th day after Easter). On this day, the memory of all deceased pious Christians is celebrated.

Parental second, third and fourth Saturdays of Lent. Instead of daily commemoration of the departed during the Divine Liturgy, which does not happen during Great Lent, the Holy Church decided to perform enhanced commemoration on these three Saturdays.

Private parent days.

Tuesday of St. Thomas week. The week is called Thomas because the Apostle Thomas is remembered on it. Tuesday itself is called Radonitsa by the Russian people: on this day the living rush to the cemetery to greet their deceased parents with the joyful news of the Resurrection of the Lord. The living commemorate Christ with the dead, bringing colored eggs with them to their graves. This is the ninth day after Easter (second Tuesday after Easter).

On September 11 (new style), on the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist (strict fasting is required), the Orthodox soldiers who were killed on the battlefield for their faith and fatherland are commemorated. The commemoration of Orthodox soldiers was established in the Russian Church in 1769 by decree of Empress Catherine II, during the war with the Turks and Poles.

Dimitrievskaya parental Saturday is celebrated a week before November 8 according to the new style (the day of remembrance of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki). It was installed by the blessed Grand Duke Dimitri Donskoy. Having won the famous victory on the Kulikovo field on September 8, 1380, Saint Prince Demetrius commemorated the fallen soldiers before the day of his Angel. The Grand Duke invited the Church to create this commemoration annually, and the people nicknamed this Saturday Dimitrievskaya.

Subsequently, on the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist and on Demetrius Saturday, they began to commemorate not only Orthodox soldiers, but along with them all the deceased.

On these days, order a mass or commemoration for your deceased loved ones at a proskomedia. Proskomedia translated from Greek means “offering.” In order to order a commemoration at the proskomedia, a Christian in the church needs to fill out a sheet with the heading “On Repose,” which lists the names of the deceased (baptized into Orthodoxy and those who did not commit suicide).

On parenting days, visit the graves of the dead, come to church, pray during the memorial service for their repose, read the 17th Kathisma at home, remember the dead during the meal. It will be good if you do all this together with your children. If they are small, take out an album with photographs, remember with them your grandfather, grandmother, other relatives, tell them what you know about them. Teach your children to turn to God, at least in a short prayer: “Rest, O Lord, the souls of your departed servants, all our relatives and friends, and grant them the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Funeral meal

The pious custom of remembering the dead at meals has been known for a very long time. This custom was described by the prophet Jeremiah: the ancient Jews had the custom of breaking bread for them as a consolation for the deceased (see: Jer. 16: 7). With the words of breaking bread for them, the prophet testifies that remembering the dead with bread, and even more so with prayers, is beneficial for the souls of the deceased.

But how exactly to remember deceased relatives at the dinner table? What to read? How to behave? Difficult questions. It is no coincidence that many memorials turn into just an excuse for relatives to get together, discuss the latest news, and eat delicious food, while Orthodox Christians should pray for their brothers in faith even at the funeral meal.

This chapter provides advice and suggestions on this matter from various people living by faith. These are not church rules, not the Charter, but a generalized experience of commemorating the dead.

1. If there is a wake(third, ninth, fortieth days, anniversary) falls during Lent, then in the first, fourth and seventh weeks of fasting, the relatives and friends of the deceased do not invite anyone. These weeks are especially strict. Let only the closest ones be at the table: mother or father, wife or spouse, children or grandchildren.

If memorial days fall on weekdays in other weeks of Lent (that is, except for the first, fourth and seventh), then they are transferred to the next (upcoming) Saturday or Sunday. This is called counter commemoration. This is done because Saturdays and Sundays are considered the holiday days of Great Lent: only on these days are the Divine Liturgies of St. Basil the Great (on Saturday) and St. John Chrysostom (on Sunday) celebrated.

2. If the commemoration falls on Bright Week (the first week after Easter), then in these first eight days after Easter prayers are not read for the departed, and memorial services are not performed for them. Instead of a memorial service, the Easter canon is sung in the Church.

The Orthodox Church allows commemoration of the departed from Tuesday of St. Thomas Week (the second week after Easter): from this day on, in the church for the deceased one can order the magpie, mass, proskomedia and requiem.

At home, privately from Easter to Tuesday of St. Thomas Week, they read for the deceased only the Easter canon .

3. You should not remember the deceased at the table with vodka or other alcoholic drinks (even if the deceased person liked to drink!). Funerals are days of grief, intense prayer for the soul of the deceased, which may be experiencing a very difficult time. So will it really be easier for the soul in that world if we enjoy wine here?

5. The memorial meal, which is arranged by the relatives and friends of the deceased, is a kind of alms for everyone who is present at it. This is where the owners want to treat everyone with something tastier and more satisfying. But we must observe the fast days established by the Church. The dead are remembered with the food that is provided on the day of the funeral on Wednesday, Friday, on days of long fasting - fasting, and on meat-eating days - fasting.

6. Before the funeral meal, the 17th kathisma is read. Prayers are read in front of holy icons, in front of lit lamps or candles. At this time, a petition to have mercy on the deceased should be heard with particular force.

Between serving the next dishes, they read the following prayer: “Seeing me lying silent and lifeless, weep for me, brothers and friends, relatives and knowledge: yesterday was the day I talked with you, and suddenly the terrible hour of death has come upon me. But come, all you who love me, and kiss me with your last kiss: for I will not go to anyone with you or converse with you; for I am going to the Judge, where there is no partiality: for the slave and the ruler stand together, the king and the warrior, the rich and the poor in equal dignity: Each one will either become famous or be ashamed by his deeds. But I ask and pray to everyone: continually pray to Christ God for me, that I may not be brought down by my sin to a place of torment, but may He restore me where the living light is” (in Russian: “Brothers, friends and acquaintances, seeing how I lie silent and lifeless, cry for me. How long has it been since I spoke with you? And how soon the hour of death has overtaken me. Oh, all of you who loved me! Come, give me your last kiss; , because I go to the Judge, Who has no partiality, before Whom the slave and the master, the king and the warrior, the rich and the beggar stand equally, all are equal, and each will be either glorified or disgraced for his deeds. But I ask and implore everyone. : Constantly pray to Christ for me, so that I will not be cast into a place of torment for my sins, but that He will indwell me where the light of life is."

This prayer is read or sung on the third, ninth and fortieth days of remembrance, when all the circumstances of the funeral are still alive and vivid in the memory of relatives. On anniversaries and parenting days, this prayer, as usual, is no longer read.

On any days of remembrance the following prayers are read: “Glory, even now”; “Through the prayers of the One who gave birth to Thee, O Christ, and Thy Forerunner, the apostles, prophets, hierarchs, the venerable and righteous, and all the saints, give rest to Thy deceased servant”; "Virgin Mother of God"

At the end of the funeral meal, ask God for all the departed: “Grant, Lord, forgiveness of sins to all who have previously departed in the faith and hope of the resurrection, our fathers, brothers and sisters, and create for them eternal memory”; “Eternal memory” (three times). What follows is a short petition with which the Savior Himself ended His last meal in earthly life: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, teach me by thy justification.”

7. Immediately before the funeral meal, the prayer “Our Father” is read. The first dish, which by right of kinship and closeness to the deceased is first tasted by his closest relatives and friends, is kutia. These are boiled wheat grains mixed with honey. If there is no wheat and honey, then use boiled rice with raisins. Grains serve as a symbol of resurrection, and honey or raisins are the sweetness that the righteous enjoy in the Kingdom of Heaven. Kutya is consecrated in the temple during a memorial service.

Then everyone present tastes the kutya little by little. It is served, according to custom, on the third, ninth and fortieth days of remembrance.

After eating, prayers of thanksgiving are read: “We thank You, Christ our God,” “It is worthy to eat.”

8. The most important thing is to pray for the repose and mercy of the soul of a deceased person. It may happen that there will be nothing left in the house except water and crackers, and there won’t even be kutya. Will the commemoration really be worse? If you don’t have a prayer book in the house, then read those prayers that you know from memory, turn to God in your own words, as long as your sighing for the souls of the dead comes from your heart. If you have a prayer book, it is better to pray according to it, as given above.

Everyone who has gathered at the funeral meal needs to pray (take part in reading and singing prayers), for where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20).

Let us remember that God, the knower of the heart, judges not only deeds, but also intentions. And if we are serious, if we are ready to work (and prayer is work!) for the repose of the souls of our departed, if we believe that through our prayerful efforts, through our faith and alms, relief will come to those for whom we pray, then God, we will hope, and will hear us, because the Savior Himself said: And whatever you ask in prayer with faith, you will receive (Matthew 21:22).

9. During funerals, there is a custom to cover mirrors in the house with cloth. This is done out of a sense of piety, so that nothing unnecessary dispels grief and sorrow about sins towards God.

Preparation for death

The most important question. - What does it mean to die like a Christian? - Petitionary litany.

The most important question.

Of the many questions that can be asked about our life on earth, perhaps the most important is how best to prepare for death.

Father! into Your hands I commend My spirit(Luke 23:46) - these were the last words of the Lord from the Cross. Will these be our last words? And what will we get before we die? We must always be prepared for death and try to move away from this world so that our very death will be a testimony of our faith and love for the Lord and, if possible, a lesson for our loved ones.

Our Savior set us the best example. Didn't he suffer on the Cross? Wasn't his death terrible and even shameful in the eyes of the whole world? And, despite what patience, what love for one’s neighbor, what endless forgiveness, what devotion to the will of God! Likewise, each of us must die.

What does it mean to die like a Christian? .

If we feel death approaching, we will try to find the courage to end our lives with dignity.

Before the cruel illness and infirmity have yet completely crushed us, let’s think about our past life, remember the shameful things that perhaps we forgot to repent of or still haven’t decided to do. And then we will decide to fast for at least three days (for seriously ill people - one day), read (or have them read to us) prayers of repentance, and prepare for Communion.

Before communion, let us reconcile with those who were our enemies, ill-wisher, and ask forgiveness from those whom we ourselves offended.

If we still have the strength to come to church, repent of our sins, receive unction, and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, then we will definitely do so.

St. Elijah Minyaty (t1714) speaks about what communion means before death in his sermon “The Greatness of the Sacrament of Holy Communion”: “A star does not shine in the sky like the soul of a Christian shines from the light of God’s grace at the hour when he receives communion. And this is because when we receive communion, then we become members of the Body of Christ, united with Christ. And if our soul were separated from the body at this hour, it would find a place with the martyrs, virgins and saints... My God! My savior! Let me die, if it be Your holy will, whether in a remote forest or in some other deserted place: it makes no difference to me, as long as before death I am worthy of communion of Your most pure Body and Blood! After all, if at that hour You will be with me, then I am not afraid of death: with such parting words as Your Body and Blood, I firmly hope to achieve Your Heavenly Kingdom.”

If we become seriously ill, we will ask our relatives to invite a priest to our home.

Let us await our death without grumbling, without indignation, without envy of those who remain to live. This will reveal our courage, our dignity, our trust (faith) in the Lord, and our complete surrender to the will of God.

Let us give our children and grandchildren the last instruction on how to live, how to bury us, what to dress us in after death, what to read at our very death, how to pray for us. We will divide our property between relatives so that there will be no resentment between them later. We will donate part of our fortune to the Church or monastery, to give alms in our name. But this is already at the very end. And while we are still alive, strong, healthy, let us not forget about death: “The memory of death gives rise to prayer, tears, repentance before God,” this is what the holy fathers teach us.

Litany of petition.

During worship, we often hear a series of prayer requests, pronounced protractedly, slowly, proclaimed by a deacon or priest on behalf of all those praying. After each petition, the choir sings: “Lord, have mercy!” or “Give it, Lord!” These are the so-called litanies (from Greek - “diligent petition”).

The litany of petition begins with the words: “Let us fulfill (let us bring to fullness, offer in its entirety) our morning (or evening) prayer to the Lord (Lord).” After each petition of the litany of petition, except for the first two, the choir sings: “Give, Lord!”

When in church the deacon proclaims: “We ask the Lord to end the rest of our life in peace and repentance” (in Russian: “Let us ask the Lord that we may live the remaining time of our lives in peace and a calm conscience”), then with all my heart , we will sincerely ask, together with the singers: “Give, Lord!”

When it will also be proclaimed: “The Christian death of our belly is painless, shameless, peaceful, and we ask for a good answer at the Last Judgment of Christ” (in Russian: “Let us ask the Lord that our death be Christian, that is, with confession and communion of the Holy Mysteries , painless, shameless and peaceful, that is, so that before our death we will make peace with our loved ones, let us ask for a kind and fearless answer at the Last Judgment") - then we will ask God for such a death.

And let us bow our knees before God, begging Him in the secret of our hearts to grant us the last great (great) mercy in this (and in that future!) life: “Give, Lord!”

What you need to know about burial

The main mistakes affecting the afterlife fate of the dead

It is necessary to draw the attention of Orthodox Christians to some important features that complement the knowledge of believers about the burial rite and the commemoration of the dead.

1. The Orthodox Church guides its children into the afterlife with the Sacraments of Repentance, Communion and Unction (Anointing). There have been cases of the appearance of the deceased, which indicate that for the sake of these Sacraments they were pardoned beyond the grave. And Saint John Chrysostom says that anyone who dies on the day or hour of receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ goes through the ordeal without delay and is honored with the Kingdom of Heaven.

2. How to order a commemoration of the deceased during the Divine Liturgy? Come to the church before the start of the service and order a mass of repose (state the full name of the deceased). After the service, take the prosphora and eat it on an empty stomach, in memory of the deceased.

3. In church you can only pray for the baptized. You cannot perform a funeral service, as well as perform any church commemorations of unbaptized or non-baptized people.

4. The funeral service is not performed in the church on the first day of Easter and the Nativity of Christ.

5. The custom of remembering the dead on Easter in the cemetery is secular: until Radonitsa, the Church does not openly pray for the dead, only secretly, at the proskomedia.

6. You cannot prepare a modest funeral table during fasting, on Wednesdays and Fridays, and also on these days you cannot bring a modest meal to church on the eve.

The Church does not pray for a person who has committed suicide. If the suicide was under the supervision of a doctor before his death and committed his irreparable act in an insane state, then you need to bring a certificate of his illness to the diocesan canonical commission, where they will give permission for a church funeral.

Life, no matter how difficult it may seem to us, must be lived patiently, hoping in God and His mercy. The suicide, by his act, rejects the mercy of God and life - this priceless and great gift that God gave him. Alms can be given, but without naming the name of the suicide. God knows and sees in whose name such a donation is made.

It is very good to give spiritual alms for the deceased (especially spiritual books). Spiritual alms are as much more valuable than material ones in the eyes of God as the soul is more valuable than the body.

7. In other difficult cases, you must contact the priests or the diocesan administration of the region in which you live.

God has everyone alive

The story of a village priest

God has no dead, but all are alive. The Savior Himself speaks about this: Have you not read what was spoken to you by God: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matthew 22:31-32). Many of us, “philosophizing” about the objects of faith and the afterlife of the dead, forget or shy away from actually helping our departed. Many are completely unaware of or refuse the Orthodox burial rite; at the same time, they willingly resort to various pagan cult actions and rituals (abundant funeral feasts, marble tombstones, wreaths, etc.).

Meanwhile, our deceased relatives and friends are waiting for help from us. They need her! From my priestly practice, I know of many cases (according to the stories of parishioners) when the deceased appeared to their living relatives (in a dream) and directly expressed their needs, talked about their errors during life, or gave instructions, warned about something...

The Holy Fathers teach us not to trust dreams, since most of us do not have spiritual reasoning to determine the nature of a dream, that is, whether it is a reflection of real events and experiences in life or a consequence of movements of the flesh (passions, illnesses, etc.) ; Is it the influence of the dark world of fallen spirits or, finally, is it truly spiritual communication with the afterlife, hidden for us for the time being. In any case, if the dream seemed significant, important, warning about something, you should, first of all, consult your confessor, parish priest, or at least a spiritually experienced person...

I’ll tell you about several events that I remember related to the topic of our conversation.

A fellow villager appeared in a dream to one of my parishioners. During his lifetime he was a convinced atheist, a persecutor of faith and the Church. She dreamed that this man stood near the ruins of the chapel, which had once been on the edge of the village, and said, pointing at them: “If earlier, during my life, I had at least occasionally looked at this holy place, at least once held my gaze, Now it would be easier for me.” This is the power of the shrine! Even destroyed and desecrated...

My uncle in his youth and middle age was a believer, visited the temple of God, read the Holy Scriptures. But, succumbing to the spirit of the times, he lost faith in God. Stopped going to church and removed holy icons from the house. Moreover, even in his thoughts he became an atheist, preaching atheism. Instead of prayers, he began to do gymnastics. But death came to him too. Being eighty years old, he fell ill. On his deathbed, he rushed about, wheezed, trying to say something, and all the time he pointed his hand to the holy corner where the icons should have hung (but did not hang). Something terrible surrounded him, was approaching, pressing, and he had no defenders, intercessors, or intercessors to God, for he himself once voluntarily abandoned them.

A relative of one of my parishioners died. He was unbaptized. Moved by a feeling of compassion, this woman came to me and asked: how to alleviate his fate after death? Church prayer for the unbaptized is unacceptable. Therefore, I advised her to give alms for the deceased, namely, soul-saving books: after all, maybe someone, having read such a book, will accept the Sacrament of Baptism, change their life for the better, and this will be the most godly sacrifice for the deceased unbaptized. After some time, this woman came to me and told me that she had seen the deceased in a dream. He sat and read one of those books that she distributed: it means that the Lord accepted this sacrifice.

Many people, even religious people, have confused and incorrect ideas about our duty towards the departed. They believe that it is necessary first of all to organize a magnificent wake with a hearty feast, vodka and rare dishes; then - erect an expensive monument on the grave, so that acquaintances will not condemn you for being stingy.

How mistaken these people are and, moreover, what harm they bring to their dear and beloved deceased relatives and loved ones! Think about the fact that vodka, drunk for the repose of the soul of the deceased, flows like a stream onto the scale on which the burden of his sins is placed, and yet it is already heavy! We need to make it easier! How? Church prayer: mass, magpies; home prayer: reading the Psalter, almsgiving...

There have been such cases in my professional practice. One day a woman came up to me and told me that they had recently buried a relative of theirs and placed a granite monument on the grave. And then the deceased appears to her in a dream and complains that this heavy gravestone is very pressing and tormenting him. I explained to her that the grave is consecrated by a cross, preferably a wooden one. After all, the cross is the instrument of our salvation, our redemption. During life, we wear a cross on our chest, venerate the cross in the temple of God, sign ourselves with the sign of the cross, and after death, our resting place should be consecrated with a cross, but not with a piece of granite or marble.

A relative appeared in a dream to another parishioner of mine, shortly after the funeral, and said: “Everything is fine, but the clamps are really bothering me.” Clamps are wreaths with which we cover the graves of our dead. But this is a legacy of pagan rites; the Orthodox burial rite does not require this.

There was such a case. Once I served a litiya for the deceased. After this, at night, this deceased woman appeared in a dream to her sister and thanked her. She said: “Until now, it was as if there was a stone lying on me, but now it has been removed.” This is the significance of lithium!

One day they invited me to perform prayers at home. This village, where I should have gone, was located five kilometers from our parish. I was able to get out only in the evening, it was already getting dark. Finished quite late, so I had to stay the night. At dawn I was awakened by a knock on the door. A young woman, a resident of this village, came. It was felt that she was in a state of great excitement. At first, when she saw me, she froze, as if shocked by something, then suddenly she began to quickly explain something. And this is what happened. At night, her father-in-law, who had died several years ago, appeared to her in a dream and said: “A priest came to the village, he is located there and there (he named the place where I spent the night), go, ask him to perform the funeral service for me, otherwise I I’m lying with you, uninveterable.” The woman told me that at the time her father-in-law died, they did not have a priest, so they buried him without a funeral service. And what was especially surprising: this woman saw her father-in-law only once - when he was already lying in a coffin; during his lifetime, she did not know him and never spoke to him. I must say that I don’t like to perform funeral services in absentia, but there was a special need here (I saw God’s Providence for the deceased); therefore, on the same day we performed the funeral service for him.

On Friday, during Bright Week, a woman catches up with me and says with tears: “Father, shouldn’t I sing the funeral service for my daughter again?” And this is what happened: while this woman was away, a dead man was unauthorizedly buried in her daughter’s grave. The woman arrived home and on the first night she sees in a dream her daughter who died ten years ago, who tells her: “Mom, I myself am a sinner, but why did they put a drunkard in my grave?” (indeed, it later turned out that the woman who was buried was a woman who had drunk herself to death on vodka). In the morning, the mother rushed to the cemetery and was surprised to see a fresh grave. I explained to this woman that there was no need to hold a funeral service for her daughter a second time, but she had to serve a memorial service.

One ninety-year-old woman said that on the fortieth day after the death of a familiar psalm-reader, he appeared to her in a dream. During her life, she helped him with housework: she washed floors, dishes, and laundry. He said sadly: “Why do you pray so little, but for us there is no better help than reading the Psalter.”

One day a girl came to me to be baptized with her sister, a young woman. After receiving Holy Baptism, they said that their deceased husband appeared to their mother twice in a dream and said: “Baptize the children.”

Pskov district, 1994

About those dying, according to human opinion, prematurely

Death is the common destiny of those living on earth, and sooner or later it will lay its hand on each of us. However, she does not resettle everyone at the same time into another world, but some earlier, others later. It overtakes some in deep old age, already satiated with earthly life, others mercilessly abducted in mature years, some unexpectedly carried away by it in the time of youth, at the time of freshness and blossoming of strength, hopes and expectations, and others in the early morning of human life - in infancy. Convinced of the inevitability of death, we more calmly reconcile with it when we see that it takes away from our midst the sick and weak elders, for whom life has already become a burden. But with deep pity and inconsolable tears we accompany to the grave those whom death overtook in their mature or young years, leaving behind wretched widows and homeless orphans, young children or frail old parents. In these cases, we usually say: how early, how prematurely such and such died. Why did the Lord deprive a useful and good person of life and through this make his loved ones unhappy? Sometimes these complaints turn into impudent murmurs and are the cause of gloomy despair and dissatisfaction with life. But can the death of a person who died before old age be considered premature? Is it possible to grieve inconsolably for such a person and increase one’s grief with a bitter murmur against God? We can find an excellent answer to this question in the life of the martyr Huar, who suffered in the 4th century. As a warrior, he loved to visit Christians imprisoned in prison, washed their wounds, brought them food, and consoled them. For his brotherly attitude towards the persecuted martyrs, he was summoned for interrogation. Here he courageously declared himself a Christian, for which he was subjected to cruel torture and beheaded with a sword. One pious widow named Cleopatra, respecting the martyr for his firmness in faith and virtue, buried his body with honor, and subsequently erected a temple on the grave. Soon after the consecration of the temple, a good woman suffered a grave grief: her only son, still young, but already achieving military honors, fell ill and died... The loving mother, weeping inconsolably for her son, threw herself over the tomb of Saint Huar and with all the strength of her soul begged him to ask for her God has the mercy to resurrect her son. Sorrow, tears, fiery prayer tired her, she fell asleep, and in her sleep a wondrous vision illuminated her: Saint Uar appeared before her with her dead son, and both of them were in shining clothes, in shining crowns, joyful, surrounded by an extraordinary light. From this vision, Cleopatra realized that the premature, in her opinion, death of her son is not a misfortune that destroyed the son and poisoned the life of the mother, but there is a good part of it - a transition from temporary life to heavenly joy in Eternal Life, to such joy as here the son did not experience it on earth, even if he lived for many more years. It goes without saying that, convinced of the blessed fate of her son, Cleopatra ceased to grieve inconsolably, and, having distributed her property to those in need, she herself settled at the temple of the martyr Huar and fasted and prayed until the end of her days. And Cleopatra acted wisely, truly in a Christian way, leaving behind vain grief and earthly sorrows and humbly submitting to the will of God. Likewise, all of us, Christians, must firmly remember that death is premature only according to our weak reasoning, but according to God’s wise discretion, everyone dies in a timely manner: at the time when his soul is most ripe for the transition to another life. After all, Christ Himself taught that the all-governing right hand of God is always stretched out over the world, protecting and saving the sons of the earth. Believing in such mercy of the Creator towards us, we must be convinced that death itself does not befall us by chance, but by His will. And His will, as good and perfect, directs everything towards our happiness and bliss, therefore, we die at the most favorable moment for us. Let us explain this idea this way: our entire life, with its beginning and end, with its consequences, is completely open before the eyes of the All-Seeing God. And just as a skilled painter, finishing his picture, with an attentive gaze notices its shortcomings and, with a skillful movement of the brush, corrects and complements the picture, and then takes it out of the workshop, so the Lord God, by His all-wise Providence, directs us to the goals He Himself intended for our existence. And when these goals are achieved by us, when our earthly lot is fulfilled, when everything to which we are called is accomplished by us, then He calls us into another world, for another life, even if, according to our human reasoning, it has not come for this it’s time, that is, old age has not yet approached. In addition, the Lord, in His mercy, saves us from ourselves, from various evils and troubles of life; The Lord knows, for example, that such and such a person, if he lives any longer, will fall into grave and unrepentant sins, and calls him to Himself, thereby preventing these disasters. Or the Lord sees that a person is exhausted and tired on the path of life and, so that he does not fall in the fight against adversity, calls him to Him. In our limited minds, we do not see this wise care of the Creator for us, therefore we grieve, murmur, become despondent, and sometimes we curse our fate. But in order to keep our rebellious heart from murmuring against Providence when, according to His will, something is done that is inconsistent with our desire, let us dwell on the following comparison. Let us suppose that one of us has a dearly beloved son, and a loving father who would not want to part with his son is offered a choice: to keep his son with him for several years, but then he will lose many benefits, or to let him go to a distant place. country, humbly bear the melancholy of separation from him, and then he will be happy forever. What father wouldn't agree to the latter? And who would grumble about that beneficial separation that leads his son to true happiness? Of course, no one. So, for example, the son of Cleopatra died, according to human reasoning, prematurely, but through this death he acquired eternal joy; who knows, if he had lived to old age, perhaps, among the temptations of life, he would have lost this crown?!

Christians! Let us not be carried away by the erroneous judgments of our minds, let us not consider as premature what the eternal, infallible mind of God finds timely, and when we see our neighbor kidnapped by death, in our opinion, untimely, let us not grumble about it, express displeasure, but let us pray more earnestly for repose the souls of the deceased and for ourselves, let us sigh before the Lord, so that He may vouchsafe us a Christian death. And when?.. When His Holy and all-good will pleases!

Priest Vladislav Vostokov

SENIOR CONSOLS IN THE LOSS OF LOVED ONES

To a husband grieving the loss of his wife

Most Honorable in the Lord N. N. Before receiving your letter, I was notified of the death of your wife, I heartily regretted her and her crying, distressed sister.

Then I received your letter, in which you express the sorrow of your heart over the deprivation of your wife and recognize yourself guilty before her, imagine her merits and say that during her life they could not give a price to them. All this sensitively affects your heart and leads to repentance for the past before God and before her. Regretting the deceased, who has passed away in the prime of her life, and you, who are grieving for her, for your guilt before her and for the little ones who have lost their tender mother, I will tell you about her. Apparently, it was the will of God that her temporary life should now cease and she should move on to an endless life. I believe that the Lord will grant her eternal bliss: she was a good Christian and in the faith and hope of Eternal Life, with the guidance of the Holy Mysteries, she left here. Church prayers and memories of her during the Bloodless Sacrifice contribute to receiving God's mercy.

I advise you not to indulge in joyless sadness about being deprived of her, but to dissolve your sadness with the hope that she will be worthy of a blessed life; and to repent of your sins before God, with a feeling of a contrite and humble heart and with a firm intention, with the help of God, not to turn to the same sins in the future and to live piously, as the Lord commands and the Church conveys His teaching to us. Believe that the Lord will accept your repentance and true proposal and give peace to your conscience; and when you are established in good conduct and virtue, then atone for your guilt before your deceased wife, for in this way her spirit will calm down and rejoice according to the word of God, as it is known that in heaven there will be more joy over one sinner who repents (Luke 15: 7 ). The angels and souls of the righteous rejoice over the conversion of the sinner. Through this you will get rid of the punishment of God that frightens you, as you write.

Try, with the assistance of God, to preserve and raise your remaining children in Christian piety, according to the teachings of our Orthodox Church, as a guarantee of the love of your wife. You will also repay the debt to your wife.

Pray for the repose of her soul and give alms to those in need of help. All this will be a joy to your wife’s soul.

Due to the strength of my feeble-mindedness, I offered you advice to console you in grief and calm your conscience. I pray to the Lord that He will give you the feeling to accept this spiritual healing and may He send your soul consolation in your sorrow.

A mother grieving the loss of her little children

Most Honorable in the Lord N. N. You describe your grief and sorrow at the deprivation of your children and, through the outpouring of your feelings of my badness, you are looking for consolation and strengthening, as well as admonition, in anticipation of seeing your infant children someday in eternity.

You, of course, are firmly convinced that our entry and departure, life and death are in the will of God. God created us, preserves us in life, and, at the time predetermined (according to His foreknowledge) for each one, carries us into eternity. And so we are: Even if we live, even if we die, we are the Lord’s (Rom. 14:8).

Our life here, no matter how long it is, but everything ends in death, but our existence does not end with it, but with death we only pass into eternity, which has no end.

With God, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. It pleased His will to remove your children from this vale of deplorable and sorrowful life at a very young age, while they had not yet experienced either the sweets or sorrows of life and had not stained their souls with sinful filth. Is it not God's love for them that they will enjoy eternal bliss? The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and no torment will touch them (Wisdom 3:1).

The destinies of God are inscrutable to us. The Apostle Paul exclaimed: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and understanding of God! Who understands the mind of the Lord? Or who will be His adviser? (Rom. 11:33). Should we test: how, why and for what purpose did God remove them from here in infancy? Although we hoped to see them as good-natured, useful to society and to have comfort from them, who could convince us of this? We often see that our hopes are not justified, and many, instead of consolation, receive great grief and sorrow through their children, and, of course, this serves as punishment for parents. But you have not experienced anything like this, except grief over their deprivation due to your weakness and cowardice. When you resort to faith and hope, you will find joyful consolation in the thought that they will receive eternal bliss and will no longer be subject to changes in life and stumbling. The Holy Scripture says: For the zeal of evil darkens the good, and the soaring of lust darkens the mind of the gentle (Wisdom 4:12), and therefore the Lord accepted your children to Himself, lest malice change their minds or flattery deceive their souls (Wisdom 4:11 ). God knows everything, even what we have not done, and therefore turn to thanksgiving to the Lord that He accepted, “for an honorable gift,” your fruit to Himself for eternal enjoyment. Read in the life of the martyr Uar how one mother, who had lost her only begotten son, received consolation from a vision of the martyr; and you will be comforted by everything described above, by faith, not by sight, and when you give thanks, you will receive from the Lord relief from your sorrow and spiritual consolation. Do you want to know how to earn a date in eternity? We should not only worry about this, but in order to be worthy of the sight of God there; then we will all be united there in love in the love of God. And how to achieve this for every Orthodox Christian, the word of God and the Orthodox Church teach us: by fulfilling the commandments of God and by relying not on our own merits, but on the merits of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us Eternal Life through the Cross and His suffering. He spoke with His most pure lips: He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will appear to him Myself (John 14:21).

Having compassion for you in your sorrow as much as I could, I wrote for your strengthening and consolation, but only God is able to strengthen and comfort you, and so cry out to Him: I will pour out my prayer before Him, I will declare my sorrow before Him (Ps. 141: 2); From the end of the earth I cried to Hebe, my heart was always depressed (Ps. 61:3) and other verbs read in the Psalter.

To a father grieving the loss of his son

Most Reverend N.N. in the Lord, I have received your venerable writing, informing you of God’s visit to you and the sadness of the death of your loving son. I sincerely sympathize and sympathize with you in your grief and fully appreciate the sorrow of your heart, due to human weakness and the sadness akin to it. Having lost such a close and loving person, one cannot help but feel and ache in heart, and one must repay the debt to the beloved object with condolences, but not indulge in inconsolable lamentation and sorrow. But since you are a true Christian, seek consolation for your suffering spirit in our sacred faith, in trust in the goodness of God and His immeasurable love for us sinners, and in devotion to His Holy will in all things. For unbelievers, pure joy does not bloom in home life, for whoever dies for his heart dies forever; from distant eternity no ray of hope and consolation shines upon him; his joys are momentary and his sorrows are bleak. When we only in this short-term life place hope and tea for consolation only from this world and from our relatives and friends, without despising with the eyes of faith in a future eternity, then, of course, with changes in fate and deprivation of our neighbors, we lose heart and do not find consolation. But a Christian, convinced and confident in the actions of God’s Providence, submits to His Holy will, which arranges everything for the benefit, and knows that in this vale he is a wanderer going to his Fatherland, escorting relatives and friends departing from here to the one appointed for them by Creative wisdom the end of the wandering, and hopes to one day unite with them in blissful eternity, by the grace of our God. And this very thing quenches the sadness of separation from people close to our hearts. To this end, the holy Apostle Paul strengthens us with his teaching in his letter to Thessalonians: I do not want you, brothers, not to know about the dead, so that you do not grieve, as others do who have no hope. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so God will bring those who died in Jesus with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14), that is, those who died will be resurrected in the hope of Eternal Life. Accept this reasoning as a consolation for your sadness and hope that your dear son has been awarded the guidance of the Christian Sacraments to a blessed eternity; If it upsets you that he left here in middle age, then this, according to the wise and unknown destinies of God, was arranged in the Holy Scripture: He was caught up quickly, lest malice change his mind, or flattery deceive his soul. The zeal of evil is darkened by a good one, and the soaring of lust changes the mind of a gentle one. Having died in time, fulfill his duty: for his soul was pleasing to the Lord (Wis. 4: 11 - 14).

Rely on the mercy of our Creator, show submission to His Holy will and be comforted by the hope that your dear son, through temporary death, came to Eternal Life, where we too will one day be called. You repay him the debt of your parental love - by caring for the remembrance of his soul, by church prayers and alms; and this should console you with the hope of God’s mercy that the Lord grants him such a commemoration, this is his best legacy here, passing with him into the future, and in our monastery, from the receipt of your letter, his name is remembered for his repose, during the liturgy, at proskomedia and at litanies, at memorial services and at psalter readings, may the Lord rest his soul in the Kingdom of Heaven and create eternal memory for him.

I wish that the most merciful Lord will give you consolation in your sadness and grant peace, health and prosperity to you and your entire family.

To a father grieving the loss of his son who committed suicide

With a sad feeling I received the news of the unfortunate death of your son, and then I was notified of this by your letter. In your grief, I sympathize with you: of course, it is great: to lose your son by such an unexpected and terrible death!.. But this is now irreversible, you must seek consolation from God. He is able to give it to you. Also, about his future fate, unknown and incomprehensible to us, surrender to the will of God, as He pleases and judge, for it is not in our power to issue judgment about the future: since the Father no longer judges anyone, but all judgment has been given to the Sons (John 5 : 22), - then what is our judgment?

One can say about his letter written to you that it is very sensitive, but also desperate. What unbearable shame could have met him? This is puzzling. Is it really the one who called him a monk? - This is completely insignificant, but there was something else weighing on his heart. Ardent character and pride were the reason for this act. How disgusting this passion is to God, why one should resist it with all one’s might with godly humility, but, unfortunately, people care little about it, and they understand it little. I cannot completely give you consolation; seek it, as I said above, from the Lord. When you indulge in useless sadness and lamentation, you will not help him, but will do great harm to yourself. Human life is full of sorrows, and we must enter the Kingdom of Heaven through many sorrows. Read the history of ancient centuries, you will find that great men and heroes, rulers of kingdoms and rulers of nations were not alien to the sorrows that the all-wise Providence of God sends to everyone, either by good will or by permission, testing faith, or punishing for sins. Even primordial man saw in his children the fratricide of Cain and the death of the first Abel, which added to his first sorrow another inexpressible sorrow. I will pass over the others in silence, I will only mention the pious and holy king and prophet David, what sorrows he bore through his children; read his story and imagine that you are no better than them and, according to the fate of God unknown to us, you fell into such a temptation. If you endure it with humility, presenting your sins, then God will most likely send you consolation, but if you accept it with cowardice, then you will increase and aggravate your sorrow. So, hand over this case to the unknown destinies of God and His merciful judgment. I wish you and your entire family peace, health and salvation, and consolation in sorrow.

To a father grieving the loss of his son in an accident

It was with spiritual sorrow that I read your letter about the deprivation of your young son by sudden death from a pediment that fell on him. Great is the sorrow in your parental hearts, but you increase it even more by your bewilderment: did this happen by the will of God or because of your carelessness. And this kills you and breaks your hearts. Ask for my reasoning on this: how should you look at this event so as not to increase the burden of sin for this. We, discussing this sad and painful adventure, cannot say that it could have happened without the permission of God’s will; if, according to the word of the Lord, the power of your head does not perish without the will of God (Luke 21:18), then can such a thing happen without His will? The reason for this is not your carelessness, for you could not always follow his childhood games and actions. And these are immediate cases; you could not in any way turn him away, especially since the other children who were with him remained unharmed, and only he alone fell to the mortal fate. We must believe that Your righteousness is like the mountains of God, Your destinies are many in the deep (Ps. 35:7). God's providence extends to everyone; but who can comprehend His destiny? Who understands the mind of the Lord? Or who will be His adviser? (Rom. 11:34) - writes the Apostle Paul. Your son is accepted into eternity, and in such a compassionate way will undoubtedly inherit bliss in the Kingdom of Heaven; and this is by God’s mercy towards him and by His foreknowledge. We don’t know what would have befallen him during the course of his life, and perhaps it would be even more painful for you to see him at age in some sad and unhappy situation, which I happened to hear from many: “It would be better if he were in He died at a young age, it wouldn’t be so sad to see”; but God knows everything. And He sees what we have not done as real. But you, having recently been in the Lavra of St. Sergius, the saint of God, whose namesake your son was, and faithfully entrusted the protection and intercession of this saint to your son, had concern not only for his prosperity, but also for eternal salvation; and now his salvation is certain. Read in the life of the martyr Huar how one famous wife, Cleopatra, built a temple and placed the relics of the martyr Huar in it, entrusting him with her only son to keep him in prosperity; but her son fell ill on the very day of the consecration of the temple and died. Out of great sadness, she grumbled at the martyr for not keeping her son, and in this sadness she fell asleep and saw the martyr Uar holding her son in great glory, asking her: is she satisfied with what he arranged for her son? She woke up, believed this, received consolation and stopped grieving. So I advise you, leaving this case to the will of God, to satisfy your sorrow with the hope of his bliss in the future life.

To a father grieving the loss of his daughter

Accept the sorrow that has visited you at the death of your dear daughter as sent from the hand of God with childlike humility.

Humbly submit to the will of God, which arranges everything for the good. Seek consolation in our holy faith: each and every one of us is destined by God to remain in this world in order to acquire the future endless age, no matter how long our life here is, no one will pass the end. Therefore, she did not die, but passed on to another, perfect life.

For them, that is, for unbelievers, he who dies dies forever, and their sorrows are joyless; for them no ray of hope shines from distant eternity; but for us who believe, there is hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. The fact that she died at a young age means that she not only lost nothing, but also escaped many of the vicissitudes and sorrows of this age. The Holy Scripture speaks of those who pass away in their youth: He was loved... he was put to death: he was caught up... lest malice change his mind, or flattery deceive his soul. The zeal of evil is darkened by a good one, and the soaring of lust changes the mind of a gentle one. Having died in time, fulfill his duty: for his soul was pleasing to the Lord (Wis. 4: 10 - 14); and all these are works of God’s providence: He knows everything that could happen to us, but we know nothing and do not understand anything, and therefore we grieve, not knowing God’s providence for us. Pray to God for the repose of her soul. This will be comforting to you and to her; May the Lord rest her soul in the Kingdom of Heaven, and may He give you peace, health and salvation.

To a father grieving the loss of his baby

You have very much taken to heart the death of your four-year-old baby and are deeply saddened both about her and the fact that she did not partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ before her death; attribute this to your negligence. I am sorry for you that you are so cowardly about this incident. Of course, one cannot help but regret losing a child and remembering her illness and hardships, but this is human weakness and infirmity. You, a believing Christian, must seek consolation in faith and trust in the incomprehensible Providence of God and His love for man. Are we really created only for this life? And how short it is and filled with all kinds of sorrows, sufferings, temptations and falls, the future age has no end. God, who leads our undeeds into the future, has now deigned to accept to Himself the young infant soul of your daughter into eternal pleasure and peace, and she has been delivered from all the local worries and sorrows that could have met her on the path of life. Do not worry about the fact that she did not receive Holy Communion before her death; but, of course, you recently partook of this Divine meal, and this did not happen because of your negligence, but because you did not count on such a quick transition to eternity; Yes, she is a small baby, and the Church does not pray for forgiveness of the sins of infants, but: “Rest, O Lord, the soul of the baby N. N. in the Kingdom of Heaven.” So, rest in the fact that it was the will of God that she should now move into eternity and that there, by the goodness of God, she enjoys eternal bliss. And put aside any embarrassment, as if you contained in your thoughts blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. This is the action of the enemy, not your thought; the enemy does not want goodness and peace, but outrages by various means; you do not obey him in confusion and do not attribute the guilt of this thought to yourself. I know how embarrassed you are by many incidents that mean nothing; I talked to you a lot about this and about the reason why it happens.

Besides, about the same thing

Your letter repeats the recollection of incidents that occurred during the illness and death of your little one; and thereby upset yourself and cause grief to your wife and children. There is no doubt about the future fate of your child; he will inherit eternal bliss. You need to believe and hope and reassure yourself with this. Let spiritual love prevail over natural, carnal love. You loved her, that’s why you regret that she is not with you, but has moved into eternity. But God loves her more than you, calling her at a young age into the face of other babies, rejoicing and enjoying eternal bliss. Do you know what could meet her in life, and especially in these fierce and difficult times? Who will avoid sorrows and illnesses? and the reasons for these - sins? But she escaped all this and is now there, “where there is no illness, no sorrow, no sighing, but endless life.” With all your love for her and, let’s say, prudence, could you arrange a happy, painless and sorrowless life for her here? May the will of God be in everything and over all of us, and our task is submission to His will. Forefather Abraham willingly sacrificed his only son, the promised one, to God, at His command. But the Lord gave you many, but took away only one; give thanks above all to God and do not lament with immeasurable sorrow. You mention a case when you read a prayer for sleep to those coming over her, and when it was necessary to turn her sick woman over and you did not dare to leave the prayer, but wanted notice of the confusion of your thoughts. You expected it in vain. You know that in many cases you have confusion and this is your mental illness; You can’t look for notice; in your confusion it’s impossible to make out it. In the same answer of Saint Barsanuphius it is said: “When someone resists embarrassment, then one should not at all consider the matter harmful, but consider it.” You are talking about death that is known now, but not before: Saint Theognostus writes about this in the “Enraptured Classes.” What kind of notice is this? That is, about our future afterlife, but not before death, which is the most humble way. It seems that this applies more to those who are silent and near perfection, but we need to think about ourselves more humbly.

To a son grieving the loss of his old mother

On January 20, a letter reached my hands, announcing the sad news - the death of your most venerable mother, and my grandmother... Glory to the merciful Lord, who made her worthy to achieve death at such an advanced age and enter into it in white robes of sincere repentance, confession of her sins, bearing herself the seal of the Holy Blessing of Unction and received Christ into herself through the Communion of His Holy and Life-giving Mysteries. I thank you for the details of her death: for they unanimously reassure me of her eternal well-being. Thank you for not hiding the feelings of your sorrowful heart from me, for I love to grieve with the saddened; all possible compassion is that indispensable duty that I owe to your love, which found me in this remote, silent and unknown corner.

Having lost a person, we give him the real price, dear uncle, maybe we increase it. With my conception, the law of destruction was already written within me; Death imposed its formidable mark on each newly formed member, saying: “He is mine.” The chain of my days is a chain of greater or lesser suffering: every new day of my life is a new step that brings me closer to incorruption. Illnesses come, and the trembling heart asks whether they are harbingers only of my death, or has the power already been given to you to separate the body from the soul, through a sad and terrible separation? Sometimes my mental eye, distracted by vanity, revives the contemplation of my sad fate; but as soon as any sudden sorrowful adventure occurs, the fire quickly flows to my favorite teaching, like a baby to its mother’s breasts - to the teaching about death; for true consolation is hidden in true sorrow, and a prudent remembrance of death dissolves mortal bonds!

You, of Whom we are creatures of ineffable goodness, tell us why you have dissolved our life with sorrows? Is Your mercy not touched by our suffering? Why do you give me existence and then compensate it with a painful death? I do not delight, says God, in your illnesses, O man! But from the seed of your sorrows and your sorrows I wish to grow for you the fruits of eternal and greatest pleasure. It was not in your only body that I imprinted the law of death and destruction, I imprinted it in every object of this visible world. I commanded the whole world to cry out to you, along with your body, that this life is not a true and real life, that there is nothing permanent in this world to which your heart could become attached with a non-blameable love! When you do not heed the loud voice of the entire universe, then My fatherly compassion, constantly desiring unlimited benefits for you, forces Me to raise the rod of punishment; Then I torment you with temptations, exhaust you with illnesses, threats, sorrows, so that you, leaving madness, become wise, leaving behind the shadows that you are chasing, fall at the feet of truth and together at the feet of salvation. My ineffable goodness and unimaginable love for mankind forced Me to take on flesh; By my humiliation I delivered to the human race the greatness of the Divine (see: John 14:9). Having endured the Cross for the sake of human salvation, whomever I want to attract to Myself, I first strike him with sorrows and arrows of sorrows, I kill his heart for temporary sweets. The rod of punishment is the banner of My love for man. Thus, I once wounded the heart of My servant David with suffering, and when a stream of temptations separated him from the world, then some terrible reflection, some extraordinary calculation appeared in his mind and occupied it.

I thought,” he writes, “I remembered the first days, and remembered the eternal summer, and learned (Ps. 77:6), that is, I looked at the passing days of my life, and they seemed to me like an instant dream, a quickly disappeared phenomenon, a dead life! Then I remembered eternity and began to compare it with the brevity of my past life and, comparing the infinite with the shortest temporal, I deduced the result; what is this result? In the same way, a person walks, but he fusses in vain (Ps. 39: 7), that is, no matter how much a person fusses, no matter how much he worries about various temporary acquisitions, but all this is in vain: for he does not cease to be on earth some brief appearance, a guest, wanderer! Such feelings and reflections removed him from the world of passions; he began to study the Law of the Lord day and night and strive to know himself and God, like a thirsty deer at a source of cool waters. As a king, he had the opportunity of all temporary pleasures, but when he tasted the sweetness of internal blessings, then he forgot to eat his own bread (see: Ps. 101: 5).

I wrote to you, uncle, my feelings, if contrary to secular reason, then at least sincere; and sincerity can be comforting in times of sadness.

Before her death, your deceased mother bequeathed to you to be a good Christian; and I wish this for you with all my heart. Then death will lose its menacing appearance in your eyes and will become only some most pleasant transition from temporary sorrows to endless pleasure; she will take you to the palaces in which, as we guess with some certainty, your venerable relative now lives. The very sadness for the dead, illuminated by the light of true reason, fades away; and in its place a good hope begins to vegetate, comforting and cheering the soul. Fanaticism constrains a person's way of thinking - true faith gives him freedom; This freedom is revealed by the firmness of a person in all possible happy and unhappy cases. The sword that cuts our chains is a purified mind that sees in any case its true, hidden, mysterious cause. This goal is achieved by the one who strives towards it by examining his insignificance with a reverent request for Divine protection and help.

Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

Cemetery

After many years of absence, I visited the picturesque village in which I was born. It has belonged to our family for a long time. There is a majestic cemetery, overshadowed by centuries-old trees. Under the wide canopies of trees lie the ashes of those who planted them. I came to the cemetery. Mourning songs and consoling songs of sacred requiem were heard over the graves. The wind moved across the tops of the trees; their leaves rustled; this noise merged with the voices of the singing clergy. I heard the names of the deceased - alive to my heart. The names were listed: my mother, brothers and sisters, my grandfathers and great-grandfathers who had passed away. What solitude in a cemetery! what a wonderful, sacred silence! so many memories! what a strange, long-term life! I listened to the inspired, divine chants of the memorial service. At first I was overcome by a feeling of sadness; then it began to ease gradually. By the end of the memorial service, quiet consolation replaced deep sadness: church prayers dissolved the living memory of the dead with spiritual pleasure. They announced the resurrection awaiting the dead! they proclaimed their life, attracted bliss to this life. The graves of my forefathers are surrounded by a circle of ancient trees. Widely spreading branches formed a canopy over the graves: a large family rests under the canopy. The ashes of many generations lie here. Earth, earth! Human generations are replaced on the surface of yours, like leaves on trees. These leaves turn sweetly green, comfortingly, innocently rustle, set in motion by the quiet breath of the spring wind. Autumn will come to them: they will turn yellow, fall from the trees onto the graves, and decay on them. When spring comes, other leaves will show off on the branches, and also - only during their short succession - they will also wither and disappear.

What is our life? Almost the same as the life of a leaf on a tree!

PRAYERS FOR THE DECEASED

Canon for the deceased

Voice 8th

Song 1

Chorus: .

I opened my mouth, O Savior, grant me the word to pray, O Mercy, for the one who has now passed away, and rest his soul, O Master.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Having been dead in the flesh, O Savior, and laid in the tomb with the dead, the soul of Your servant rests in a green place, like the Merciful.

Glory: Hear my prayerful voice, O God of the Trihypostasis, and grant the soul of the reposed in the depths of Abrahamlikh, the Deliverer.

And now: You, Most Pure Mother of God, Whom you conceived without the temptation of a man, pray to Your Son to grant peace to Your departed servant.

Song 3

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

In a place of greenery, in a place of peace, where the faces of the saints rejoice, the soul of Your departed servant rests, O Christ, the Only Merciful.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Where the faces of the saints are, place there, O Master, who served You with all my heart and lifted Your yoke upon His frame, as the One Lord of life and death.

Glory: Heavenly Father Almighty, and the Only Begotten Son, and the Holy Soul of Origin, despise the sins of the dead, and instill in the Church the firstborn, glorify Thee with all those who have pleased Thee.

And now: As the Holy Mother of the Most Holy God, the Lady of all, Mary the Mother of God, with all the saints of this, pray for the soul of Your servant to rest in the heavenly villages.

Lord have mercy (three times).

Sedalen, voice 5th

Glory, and now: Theotokos:

You shone forth from the Virgin to the world, O Christ God, who showed the sons of light by You, have mercy on us.

Song 4

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

He who descended into the underworld, O Christ, hast raised up all that has died, and has departed from us, O Savior, who is generous.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

There is no one without sin, except You are One, Master, for this sake forgive the one who has been removed and forgive him his sins, and place him in paradise.

Glory: Hear, O Holy Trinity, the voices of the prayer offered to You in the church for the deceased, and illuminate with Your Divine light the soul darkened by vain devotions.

And now: You gave birth, O Most Pure One, without a male seed, to a perfect God and a perfect Man, who takes away our sins, O Virgin. Pray to this, Lady, to grant Your departed servant peace.

Song 5

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Having the power of life and death, rest has been left from us, O Christ God, for Thou art the Savior of all, peace and life.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Place your hope in Thee, the Savior, who has departed from us; You, Lord, have mercy on him, for God is Most Merciful.

Glory: Enlighten us, Trisagion, glorified Master, who pray to You, receive heavenly peace, and place in peaceful villages the soul that has departed from the temporary in the hope of endless life.

And now: Shuyago standing, Most Pure One, beseech Your departed Son to deliver, O Virgin Lady, as the Savior and God of our Existing Mother.

Song 6

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

You have overthrown hell, O Master, and you have resurrected those who have died from time immemorial: and now you have taken him away from us into the bosom of Abraham, You, God, have abode, having forgiven all sins, for You are Merciful.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

The commandment that you gave to me, O God, transgressed and were mortal, but You, God, who descended into the grave and resurrected souls from all eternity, do not raise me up, O Master, to torment, but to rest, the departed one cries out to You, O Most Merciful.

Glory: We pray to Thee, the Originless Father and the Son and the Holy Soul, embittered by the malice of the soul-evil world and towards You, the Creator, do not reject the soul that has passed into the depths of hell, my Savior God.

And now: From heaven, Christ our God, like rain on the fleece, the Most Pure One, descended on Thee, drinking the whole world and drying up all the godless streams, flooding the whole earth with His mind, Ever-Virgin; Pray to him to give peace to Your departed servant.

Lord have mercy (three times). Glory to this day:

Kontakion, tone 8

Ikos

Song 7

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Master Christ God, whenever you want to judge the world, have mercy on the soul of your servant, whom you received from us, crying: our father, God, blessed are you.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

In the food of heaven, where the righteous souls rejoice, those who have served You, consider with them, O Christ, the soul of Your servant, who sang: Our father, God, blessed art thou.

Glory: Saved three Jewish youths into the fires, glorified in the Three Faces, deliver the eternal fire of the departed, who sang to You truly: our father, God, blessed art thou.

And now: Who gave birth to the Lord Christ, who gave birth to God of all, delivered the power of the dark prince of the air, O Virgin, who reposed her soul in faith and sang: Our father, God, blessed art thou.

Song 8

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Having finished the course and come running to You, Lord, the departed one now cries out, forgive my sins, O Christ God, and do not judge me, when you want to judge everyone, for I truly cry to You: all the works of the Lord, sing to the Lord and exalt Him forever.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

He bore, O Master, Thy yoke on his frame, and Thy burden was light, even if not always, but in the place of Thy saints indwelled his soul, who sang to Thee, O Christ the Savior: bless the youths, sing to the priests, people exalt Him forever.

Let us bless the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Lord.

Beginningless Holy Trinity, God the Father and the Son and the Holy Soul, in the person of the saints rank the soul of Your departed servant and deliver eternal fire, so that He may praise You, singing forever: bless the youths, sing to the priests, people exalt Him forever.

And now: Thee, Virgin, prophecy of the face prophesied, for the clairvoyant eyes of Thee saw: for the rod is called Thee, and also the eastern door, and the mountain of man is uncut. We confess You truly as the Mother of God, who gave birth to the God of all things, and pray to Him for the repose of the departed One forever and ever.

Song 9

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

Jesus, my God, Savior, Adamle, you took away crime and tasted death, and freed people from it, O Merciful One. In the same way we pray to Thee, O Most Merciful One: rest in His repose, for He is good in the courts of Thy saints, for He alone is All-Good and Merciful.

Rest, O Lord, to the soul of Your departed servant (Thy departed servant) .

There is no one, O Merciful One, who has not sinned among men, except You alone, Jesus Christ, take away the sins of the whole world. Moreover, having cleansed Your servant from sins, establish in Your holy courts, for You are the life and peace, and light, and joy of all who have pleased You.

Glory: All human nature marveled at how the Only Begotten Son of the Father Without Beginning took flesh from the Virgin through the action of the Holy Spirit, and you suffered like a man, so that you might revive the dead. Thus, now departed from us, we diligently pray to Thee, in the land of the living, as Good, dwell.

And now: We call You the Bride, Most Pure, the Invisible Father, and the Mother of the Son, embodied by You in the Holy Spirit, and we offer You a prayer book for Your departed servant: We magnify You as the helper of the imams of the earth, and we magnify You with singing love.

It is worthy to eat as truly to bless Thee, the Mother of God, the Ever-Blessed and Most Immaculate and the Mother of our God. The most honorable Cherub and the most glorious without comparison Seraphim, who without corruption gave birth to God the Word, the real Mother of God, we magnify You.

Funeral lithium

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us (three times).

Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us; Lord, cleanse our sins; Master, forgive our iniquities; Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for Thy name's sake.

Lord have mercy (three times).

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Our Father, who art in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in heaven and on earth. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors; and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Lord have mercy (12 times).

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Come, let us worship our King God.

Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ, our King God.

Come, let us bow and fall down to Christ Himself, the King and our God.

Psalm 90

Living in the help of the Most High, he will settle in the shelter of the Heavenly God. Says the Lord: My God is my intercessor and my refuge, and I trust in Him. For He will deliver you from the snare of the trap, and from rebellious words, His splash will fall over you, and under His wing you hope: His truth will surround you with weapons. Do not be afraid from the fear of the night, from the arrow flying during the day, from the thing that passes in the darkness, from the burning, and from the demon of the midday. Thousands will fall from your country, and darkness will be at your right hand, but it will not come close to you, otherwise you will see your eyes, and you will see the reward of sinners. For You, O Lord, are my hope, You have made the Most High your refuge. Evil will not come to you, and wound will not come close to your body, For His Angel commanded you to keep you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their arms, but not when you dash your foot on a stone, step on an asp and a Basil, and cross a lion and a serpent. For you have trusted in Me, and I will deliver you: I will cover you, For you have known My name. He will call to Me, and I will hear him: I am with him in sorrow, I will destroy him, and I will glorify him, I will fill him with long days, and I will show him My salvation.

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, glory to you, God (three times).

Troparion, tone 4

From the spirits of the righteous who have passed away, rest the soul of Thy servant (Thy servant), O Savior, preserving it in the blessed life that belongs to You, O Lover of Mankind.

In Thy chamber, O Lord, where all Thy saints rest, rest also the soul of Thy servant (Thy servant), for Thou art the only Lover of mankind.

Glory: Thou art God, who descended into hell and loosed the bonds of the bound, and give rest to the soul of Thy servant (Thy servant).

And now: One pure and immaculate Virgin, who gave birth to God without a seed, pray for the salvation of his (her) soul.

Sedalen, voice 5th

Rest, our Savior, with the righteous of Thy servant, and this one is lodged in Thy courts, as it is written, despising, as Good, his sins, voluntary and involuntary, and all those in knowledge and not in knowledge, Lover of mankind.

Kontakion, tone 8

With the saints, rest, O Christ, the soul of Your servant, where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing, but endless life.

Ikos, tone 8

Thou art the One immortal One, who created and created man, on earth we were created from the earth, and to the other earth we will go, as you commanded, Who created me and gave me: as you are the earth, and you will go to the earth, and maybe all men will go, creating a funeral lament creating a song : alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The most honorable Cherub and the Most Glorious without comparison Seraphim, who gave birth to God the Word without corruption, the real Mother of God, we magnify You.

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Lord have mercy (three times), bless.

Through the prayers of the saints our father...

In the blessed dormition, grant eternal peace, O Lord, to Thy departed servant (name), and create for him eternal memory.

Eternal memory (three times).

His soul will dwell in the good, and his memory throughout generation and generation.

Prayer for those who died outside their fatherland, for the rootless and wretched

Lord Jesus Christ our God, Protector of the orphans, Guide of the strange, Pilot of the floating, shelter of the stormy, traveling with the traveling, comfort of the weeping, feeder of the poor! We pray to Thee, O most merciful Lord, remember in Thy Kingdom the souls of Thy departed servants (names), who reposed in the faith to Thee, but departed to foreign lands, without the motherly guidance and blessing of Thy Holy Church. Receive, Master, under Your compassion the slaves who passed away there in grief and sorrow for their relatives and neighbors, where no one consoled them in the terrible hour of death, where no one offered You a warm prayer for their gracious passage from this temporary life into the heavenly world. Therefore, we pray to Thee, Most Good One, we pray to Thee, O omnipresent and ever-present Lord, look upon these Thy servants with Thy mercy, forgive them every sin, voluntary and involuntary, committed in word and deed, and everything, even in knowledge and ignorance. We beg You with the prayers and intercession of Your Mother, Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, and all the saints, do not destroy those who have gone to You with their iniquity, but show them Your great mercy, show them Your love for mankind and Your generosity, lead them to Your quiet refuge and establish them in Your House.

We also pray for the repose of the souls of the departed Thy servants [the souls of Thy departed servant (Thy servants)] (names), who went to Thee rootless and have no prayer books for themselves from their relatives except Thy Holy Church; For this reason, we pray to You, Lord, accept our prayer for these too: forgive them all their sins and have mercy on them according to Your great mercy; house them in Your Holy Dwelling, so that they may find peace in You, as in the Savior and Redeemer of the human race.

God! God! Even when Your departed servants, who were in poverty and misery, for a cup of cold water, for a piece of bread, for a single mite given to them in Your name, brought You prayers for us, petitions and thanksgivings; Even if the orphans blessed the hand that did good to them, praying for the sending down of Your blessings to us, for this reason we pray to You now, Christ our God, and we for them: remember in Your Kingdom these, as the least, according to You, Your brothers; forgive them every sin, voluntary or involuntary, cover them with Your compassion and place them in Your Holy palace; and as those who received food here on earth through the invocation of Your holy name, saturate there in heaven from the fatness of Your house and may they be comforted and may all who truly wept to You enjoy endless joy; place them with Thy saints, so that all things may be purchased by You, Judge of the living and the dead, and may they form a host of Thy chosen ones, and thus may they glorify, praise and extol Your boundless mercy to boundless ages. Amen.

Prayer for the repose of those who have died after a serious and long illness

Lord, Lord! You are righteous, and Your judgment is righteous: You, in Your eternal Wisdom, have set the limit of our life, which no one will pass. Wise are Your laws, unsearchable are Your ways! You command the angel of death to remove from the body the soul of a baby and an old man, a husband and a young man, a healthy and a sick person, according to Your unspeakable and unknown to us destinies; but we believe that this is Your holy will, beforehand, according to the judgment of Your righteousness, You, Most Good Lord, as the all-wise, and omnipotent, and omniscient Physician of our souls and bodies, send illnesses and ailments, troubles and misadventures to man, as spiritual medicine . You strike him and heal him, you kill the dead in him and give life to the immortal, and, like a child-loving Father, you punish him even if you accept him: we pray to You, O Lord who loves mankind, accept Your servant (Your servant) (name) who has come to You, whom You have already sought Thou art, by Thy love for mankind, who punished with grave bodily illness, to save the soul from mortal illness; and if you have accepted all this from You with humility, patience and love for You, as the all-powerful Physician of our souls and bodies, show him (her) today Your rich mercy, as if he (she) has endured all this sin of his for the sake of. Impute to him (her), Lord, this temporary serious illness as some kind of punishment for the sins committed in this vale of tears, and heal his (her) soul from sinful ailments. Have mercy, Lord, have mercy on the one you have sought, and the one punished temporarily, I pray to You, do not punish him with deprivation of Your eternal heavenly blessings, but grant him (s) the privilege to enjoy them in Your Kingdom. If the deceased Thy servant (Thy servant), without reasoning within himself, for the sake of this was the touch of Thy healing and providential Hand, obstinately speaking to himself, or, out of his unreasonableness, grumbling in his heart, like this burden consider yourself unbearable, or, due to the weakness of your nature, suffering from a long illness and upset by a misfortune, we pray to You, Long-suffering and Much-Merciful Lord, forgive him (her) this sin according to Your boundless mercy and Your unconditional mercy towards us sinners and unworthy Thy servants, forgive for the sake of Your love for the human race; If his (her) iniquity exceeds his (her) head, but illness and illness do not move him (s) to full and sincere repentance, we beg You, the Author of our life, we beg You with Your redemptive merits, have mercy and save, Savior, slave Thine (Thy servant) from eternal death. Lord God, our Savior! You, by faith in You, granted forgiveness and remission of sins, granting pardon and healing to a weakened man of thirty years old, when you said: “Your sins are forgiven you”; With this faith and hope in Your goodness, we resort to Your, O Most Generous Jesus, ineffable mercy and in the tenderness of our hearts we pray to You, Lord: for now and today, this is the word of pardon, the word of remission of sins to the deceased (s), to the ever-remembered (- my) by us to Thy servant (Thy servant) (name), may he be healed spiritually, and may he dwell in a place of light, in a place of peace, where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing, and may his (her) illnesses and ailments be replaced there, tears of suffering and sorrow into a source of joy about the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer for those who have died due to mental illness

Wonderful are Your works, O Lord, and there is no end to the greatness of Your mind! How, through varied and unsearchable paths, do You lead Your people in this world from the world below to the world above! You destroy the wisdom of the wise, you reject the wisdom of the wise, you waste and humble the high and proud, you overthrow and disgrace the strong and noble; You choose the wild and humble, the humble, the weak and the weak, elevate, strengthen and glorify, revealing the wise and good advice of Your providential vision to infants and hiding them from those who imagine themselves to be perfect in their minds. Who is pleased to understand all Your destiny, O God, in the image, according to the richness of Your goodness and long-suffering, admonishing, teaching and saving us sinners and unworthy Thy servants? You apply intelligence to the other and bestow sound judgment, but you conquer the other, tear away the stony heart from the other and invest it with flesh; You bestow upon him physical strength and vigor, as well as spiritual courage; You allow others to be sick in soul and body; You make him happy, but you want to make him sad; You live, and you die. Oh, great and inscrutable in the secrets of His consideration for us, Lord our God! I confess this before You with all my heart, as with the deceased (neck) of Thy servant (Thy handmaid) (name), who has departed (my name), it was not without Thy wise and good will and vision that a crushing illness of the soul, and its true guilt, came into being. and all the power of You alone knows exactly the essence: I also reverently bowed down before Your, O Lord, indescribable, but I will take out saving destinies, with tenderness I cry out to You: incline Your ear to my prayer and be philanthropic to me, and soon hear my prayer for this Thy servant ( yours). I am perplexed and greatly grieve over the extraordinary fate of him (her), who, not like other people, sensible, self-aware and firm in memory, has left us for You, but as if he is deprived of his mind, perverted in meaning, painfully saddened ( -on) in the heart, not having the self-controlling power of your will, frantically and ferociously appearing in your actions. God! God! What is this incomprehensible phenomenon in the spiritual life of mankind? How can one created in Your image and likeness fall into extreme foolishness, go mad, go berserk, and do inappropriate things? What then is this with the breath of Thy life, O God Almighty? Truly, according to Your, O Lord, unsearchable paths and ineffable advice, all of this is arranged wisely and with good intentions by You: inflict it, as if it were a temporary punishment, and allow a great deal of disorder and transformation in the wonderful composition of our being, so that by the hidden ways of You you arrange, restore and correct all obstinate and corrupted things that have been created by unreasonable, evil and crafty customs, and such visible evil among people, with You, All-Good Master, ever-flowing Source of Wisdom and Reason, with You they turn into good. For this sake, humbly falling to Thy inexhaustible bounties, our Humane-loving Savior, I pray to Thee, Giver of good things, accept Thy deceased servant (Thy servant) (name), as he was so ill and suffered in in this life, accept by Thy mercy, and do not add, O Good One, even there, in the country of our brothers who have departed from us, the pain and suffering of him (her), which are immeasurably more cruel than here on earth; but turn away from him (her) the rebuke of Your anger and look at him (her) with the bright eye of Your mercy; but do not let the cruel ones perish forever, for He Himself, the Most Merciful Savior, did not want the death of a sinner, did not want anyone to perish, Sweetest Jesus Christ, the Son of God, heal those who are incurably ill in body, cleanse lepers and make the demons understanding! I pray to You, Lord, heal the soul of Your deceased servant (Your servant) (name), cleanse him (her) from all voluntary and involuntary, known and unknown sins and falls of his (her). O Savior Himself, cleanse those who were not able to rationally and in sound memory confess them to You, for this sake have mercy on him (her), Lord, and take from him (her) all the heavy burden of sins, take away the sins of the world! Cover and justify him (s) with Your grace, and, in the image of destinies, save Your servant (s) from Your chosen ones, but make him worthy to be a companion (s) and heavenly faces, like a wretched servant Thy (Thy servant), who is here on earth excommunicated and alienated from his relatives, friends and neighbors, and do not deprive him of Your Heavenly Kingdom, as he is deprived of Thy here on the earth to see Thy goodness and left to drag out his days performing bitter deeds: for this sake, I pray to Thee, Lord, rest him (s) with Thy saints in the House of Thy Father, with Him, to Thee, our Deliverer and Giver of Life, together with the Most Holy By Your Spirit we send forth glory always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Prayer for the repose of Orthodox soldiers killed in battle for the faith and Fatherland

Invincible, incomprehensible and strong in battle, Lord our God! You, according to Your inscrutable destinies, send the angel of death to another under his roof, to another in the village, to another on the sea, and to another on the battlefield from the weapons of war, spewing out terrible and deadly forces, destroying the bodies, tearing apart the limbs and crushing the bones of the warriors; We believe that according to Your, Lord, wise vision, such death is accepted by the defenders of the faith and the Fatherland.

We pray to Thee, Most Blessed Lord, remember in Thy Kingdom the Orthodox soldiers who were killed in battle, and receive them into Thy heavenly palace, as wounded martyrs, stained with their own blood, as if they suffered for Thy Holy Church and for the Fatherland, which Thou hast blessed, as Thy heritage . We pray to Thee, accept the warriors who have gone to You into the hosts of the hosts of the Heavenly Forces, accept them by Thy mercy, as those who fell in battle for the independence of the Russian land from the yoke of the infidels, as if they defended the Orthodox faith from enemies, who defended the Fatherland in difficult times from foreign hordes; Remember, Lord, and all those who fought a good deed for the ancient preserved Apostolic Orthodoxy, for the Russian land that You have chosen, sanctified and holy in its language, and the enemies of the Cross and Orthodoxy offered both fire and sword. Receive in peace of soul your servants (names), who fought for our prosperity, for our peace and tranquility, and grant them eternal rest, as they saved cities and towns and defended the Fatherland with themselves, and have mercy on the Orthodox soldiers who fell in battle with your mercy, forgive them everything sins committed in this life in word, deed, knowledge and ignorance. Look with Your mercy, O Most Merciful Lord, on their wounds, torment, groaning and suffering, and impute to them all this as a good deed and pleasing to You; accept them by Thy mercy, having endured fierce sorrow and hardship here, in need, cramped conditions, in labor and vigil, there was hunger and thirst, you endured exhaustion and exhaustion, you were considered like sheep of the slaughter. We pray to Thee, Lord, that their wounds may be healing and oil poured out on their sinful sores. Look down from heaven, O God, and see the tears of the orphans who have lost their fathers, and accept the tender prayers of their sons and daughters for them; hear the prayerful sighs of fathers and mothers who have lost their children; hear, O most gracious Lord, the inconsolable widows who have lost their spouses; brothers and sisters crying for their relatives - and remember the men killed in the strength of their strength and in the prime of their years, the elders, in the strength of spirit and courage; look at our heartfelt sorrows, see our lamentation and have mercy, O Most Good One, towards those who pray to You, Lord! Thou hast taken away our dear ones from us, but do not deprive us of Thy mercy: hear our prayer and accept Thy servants (names) who have mercifully gone to Thee. call them to Your palace, like valiant warriors who laid down their lives for faith and the Fatherland on the battlefields; accept them into the host of Your chosen ones, as those who served You with faith and righteousness, and rest them in Your Kingdom, like the martyrs who went to You wounded, ulcerated and betraying their spirit in terrible torment; brought into Your holy city all Your servants (names) who are ever remembered by us, like valiant warriors who fought courageously in the terrible battles of which we remember them; their vestments are there in fine linen, bright and clean, as here they whitened their vestments in their blood, and were worthy of the crowns of martyrdom; make them collectively participants in the triumph and glory of the victors who fought under the banner of Your Cross with the world, flesh and the devil; place them in the host of glorious passion-bearers, good-victorious martyrs, the righteous and all Your saints. Amen.

Prayer for those who died sudden (sudden) death

Inscrutable are Your destinies, Lord! Thy ways are unsearchable! Give breath to every creature and bring everything from those who do not exist into being, You send the angel of death to him on a day he does not know, and at an hour he does not expect; You snatch him from the hand of death, granting him life with his last breath; Be long-suffering to the new one and give him time for repentance; You cut it like a grain with the sword of death in one hour, in the twinkling of an eye; You strike him with thunder and lightning, you burn him with flame, and you give him up to the beasts of the oak forest; You command them to be swallowed up by the waves and abysses of the sea and the abysses of the earth; You kidnap them with a destructive ulcer, where death, like a reaper, reaps and separates father or mother from their children, brother from brother, husband from wife, tears the baby from the mother’s womb, casts lifeless the mighty of the earth, the rich and the poor. What the hell is this? Your look is wondrous and perplexing to us, O God! But Lord, Lord! You are only One, knowing everything, weighing why this happens and why it should be, as if Your servant (Your servant) (name) was consumed in the blink of an eye by the gap of death. If you are punishing him (her) for his (her) many, grave sins, we pray to You, O many-merciful and all-merciful Lord, not with Your wrath do you reprove him (her) and punish him completely, but, according to Your goodness and according to Your unconditional mercy, show him (her) great Your mercy is in the forgiveness and forgiveness of sins. What if your deceased servant (thy servant), in this life thinking about the Day of Judgment, recognized his own repentance and desired to bring you fruits worthy of repentance, but not having achieved this, was called by you to be on the day of his not knowing, and at an hour I didn’t expect; For this reason, we pray even more to Thee, Most Good and Most Merciful Lord, to correct, arrange, and complete the unfinished work of salvation, which Thy eyes have seen, with Thy ineffable goodness and love for mankind; The imams have only one hope in Your endless mercy: You have judgment and punishment, You have truth and inexhaustible mercy; You punish, but at the same time you are merciful; beeshi, and at the same time you are acceptable; We diligently pray to Thee, O Lord our God, do not punish the one suddenly called to You with Thy Last Judgment, but have mercy, have mercy on him (them) and do not cast him away from Thy presence. Oh, it is terrible to suddenly fall into Thy hands, O Lord, and to appear before Thy impartial judgment! It is terrible to come to You without gracious guidance, without Repentance and communion of Your Holy, terrible and life-giving Mysteries, Lord! If the suddenly departed Thy servant (Thy servant) who is remembered by us is so much a sinner, so much guilty of condemnation at Your righteous court, we pray to You, have mercy on him (her), not condemn him (s) to eternal torment, to eternal death; Be patient with us, give us the length of our days, to pray to You all our days for Your departed servant (s), until you hear us and accept by Your mercy the one who suddenly departed to You; and grant us, Master, to wash away his (her) sins with tears of contrition and our sighs before You, so that Your servant (Your servant) (name) may not be brought down by his sin to a place of torment (name), but may he dwell in a place of rest . You Yourself, Lord, command to strike at the door of Your mercy, we pray to You, O Most Generous King, and we will not cease to beg Your mercy and cry out with the repentant David: have mercy, have mercy on Your servant, O God, according to Your great mercy. If You are dissatisfied with our words, with this little prayer of ours, we beseech You, Lord, with faith in Your saving merits, with trust in the redemptive and miraculous power of Your sacrifice, offered by You for the sins of the whole world; We pray to Thee, O Sweetest Jesus! You are the Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, you were crucified for our salvation! We pray to Thee, as our Savior and Redeemer, save and have mercy and deliver from eternal torment the soul of Thy servant (Thy servant) (name) who has suddenly died, so often remembered by us, do not leave him to perish forever, but make you worthy to reach Your quiet refuge and rest there, where all Your saints rest. Together we pray to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ our God, by Thy mercy accept all Thy servants (names) who suddenly came to Thee, who were covered by water, who were embraced by the coward, who were killed by murderers, who were hit by fire, hail, snow, frost, hunger and the spirit of a stormy slaying. , thunder and lightning struck, struck a destructive ulcer, or died by some other guilt, by Your will and permission, we pray to You, accept them under Your mercy and resurrect them into eternal, holy and blessed life. Amen.

Prayer to the Great Martyr Barbara so that before her death she will not lose Holy Communion

To you, as to the true speedy healing and many-wonderful healing source, holy virgin Varvaro the Great Martyr, I am weak, and falling earnestly, I pray: see the wounds of sin and all-body ulcers, see the infirmity of my soul, and this, forced by your usual mercy and goodness, heal by trying. Listen to the voice of my prayer, do not despise the groaning brought from my damned heart and hear my cry, for you are my refuge. The Holy, Consubstantial and Indivisible Trinity, which you depicted as three windows in the bathhouse of the Fatherland, pray for me, a sinner and impatient, to have mercy on me now and on the day of my death.

Pray to the Heavenly Father, so that I, bowed down and cast down by all my sins, will raise me up to His words, and will always arrange for me to have the heart to have a heart that is heavenly and not earthly. Pray to Christ, the Son of God, who heard your suffering prayer in prison, so that I, who am lazy in prayer and in despondency, as if sitting in prison, will instruct me to quickly move along the path of God’s commandments and give me a fervent desire to pray unceasingly. Call upon the Holy Spirit, the purity of the inexhaustible Source, in the ascetic struggle of suffering through honor, you, the pure virgin, who strengthened and protected you from the cold nakedness of your wings, so that even I, cold and unclean, will create a pure heart and renew the spirit of rights in my womb; Moreover, may He grant me to strive diligently in a pure life and strengthen me to do good deeds. I believe that all this is possible for me, O holy Great Martyr Varvaro, to intercede with the Most Holy Trinity; and if you desire, you are strong in helping me, for you have glorified God in your suffering lands. And we know, holy virgin, that nothing is impossible for you, unless you despise my tears and sighs; and to you, my soul abiding in Heaven, worshiping, I dare to prayerfully say: may your ears hear the voice of my prayer and may your holy intercession not allow me to die without confession and repentance, for even if you are glorified in any goodness, but in this especially, for everyone, having hope in you and always calling on you for help, will avoid sudden death, deliver the pure virgin, great martyr Varvaro, from the weaker and less accursed, and with your all-powerful prayers honor me at the right hand of Christ the Son of God and hear the voice saying: good servant and faithful, enter into the joy of your Lord. Amen.

Prayerful sighing to the Lord

The dying prayer of Hieroschemamonk Parthenius of Kyiv

1. When I, depressed by illness, feel the approach of the end of my earthly existence, Lord, have mercy on me.

2. When my poor heart, at its last beats, languishes and languishes in mortal pain, Lord, have mercy on me.

3. When my eyes are watered with tears for the last time at the thought that during my life I have offended You, O God, with my sins, Lord, have mercy on me.

4. When the rapid beating of my heart begins to hasten the outcome of my soul, Lord, have mercy on me.

5. When the mortal pallor of my face and my cold body strikes my loved ones with fear, Lord, have mercy on me.

6. When my vision is darkened and my voice is cut off, my tongue turns to stone, Lord, have mercy on me.

7. When terrible ghosts and visions begin to drive me to despair of Your mercy, Lord, have mercy on me.

8. When my soul, struck by the memories of my crimes and the fear of Your judgment, becomes exhausted in the fight against the enemies of my salvation, who are trying to drag me into the darkness of torment, Lord, have mercy on me.

9. When the sweat of death drenches me and the soul with painful suffering moves away from the body, Lord, have mercy on me.

10. When mortal darkness closes all the objects of this world from my dim gaze, Lord, have mercy on me.

11. When all sensation in my body ceases, my veins become numb and my muscles become rigid, Lord, have mercy on me.

12. When human speech and earthly sounds no longer reach my ears, Lord, have mercy on me.

13. When the soul appears before Your face, O God, in anticipation of Your appointment, Lord, have mercy on me.

14. When I begin to heed the righteous sentence of Your judgment, which determines my eternal fate, Lord, have mercy on me.

15. When the body, abandoned by the soul, becomes the prey of worms and corruption and, finally, my entire composition turns into a handful of dust, Lord, have mercy on me.

16. When the sound of the trumpet awakens everyone at Your Second Coming and the book of my deeds is opened, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, Your sinful servant (name). In Your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Amen.

Prayer of parents for deceased children

Lord Jesus Christ, our God, Lord of life and death, Comforter of the afflicted! With a contrite and tender heart, I run to You and pray to You: remember, Lord, in Your Kingdom your departed servant (Your deceased servant), my child (name), and create eternal memory for him (her). You, Lord of life and death, have given me this child. By your good and wise will, you deigned to take it away from me. Blessed be Thy name, O Lord. I pray to Thee, Judge of heaven and earth, with Thy endless love for us sinners, forgive my departed child all his sins, voluntary and involuntary, in word, in deed, in knowledge and ignorance. Forgive, O Merciful One, our parental sins too, so that they may not remain on our children: we know that we have sinned many times before You, many of whom we have not kept, and have not done as You commanded us.

If our deceased child, ours or his own, for the sake of guilt, lived in this life, working for the world and his flesh and not more than You, the Lord and his God, if he loved the delights of this world, and not more than Your word and Your commandments, if he indulged in sweets worldly, and not more than contrition for one’s sins, and in intemperance having given up vigil, fasting and prayer to oblivion, I earnestly pray to Thee: forgive, Most Good Father, all such sins of my child, forgive and weaken, even if you have done other evil things in this life. Christ Jesus! You raised the daughter of Jairus through the faith and prayer of her father, You healed the daughter of the Canaanite wife through faith and the request of her mother, hear my prayer and do not despise my prayer for my child. Forgive, Lord, forgive all his sins, and having forgiven and cleansed his soul, take away eternal torment and place him with all Your saints, who have pleased You from all eternity, where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing, but endless life. For there is no man who will live and not sin, but You are the only one besides sin, so that when you judge the world, my child will hear Your most beloved voice: come, blessed of My Father, and inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For You are the Father of mercies and generosity, You are our Life and Resurrection, and to You we send glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Children's prayer for parents

Lord Jesus Christ, our God! You are the keeper of the orphans, the refuge of the grieving and the comforter of the weeping. I, an orphan, come running to You, groaning and crying, and I pray to You: hear my prayer and do not turn Your face away from the sighs of my heart and from the tears of my eyes. I pray to You, merciful Lord, satisfy my grief over separation from my parent (matter) (name), but his soul (her), as if it had gone to You with true faith in You and firm hope in Your philanthropy and mercy, accept into Your Heavenly Kingdom. I bow before Your holy will, which was taken away from me, and I ask You not to take away from him (her or them) Your mercy and mercy. We know, Lord, that You, the Judge of this world, punish the sins and wickedness of the fathers in children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, even to the third and fourth generation: but you also have mercy on the fathers for the prayers and virtues of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. With contrition and tenderness of heart, I pray to Thee, merciful Judge, do not punish with eternal punishment the deceased, unforgettable for me, Your servant (s), my parent (mother) (name) , but forgive him (her) all his (her) sins, voluntary and involuntary, in word and deed, knowledge and ignorance, committed by him (her) in his (her) life here on earth, and according to Your mercy and love for mankind, prayers for the sake of the Most Pure Mother of God and all the saints, have mercy on him (you) and deliver him from eternal torment. You, merciful Father of fathers and children! Grant me, all the days of my life, until my last breath, not to cease to remember my deceased parent (mother) in my prayers, and to beg Thee, the righteous Judge, to order him (s) in a bright place, in a place cooler and in a calm place, with all the saints, from where all illness, sadness and sighing have escaped. Merciful Lord! Accept this day for Thy servant (Thy) (name) my warm prayer and give him (her) Thy reward for the labors and cares of my upbringing in faith and Christian piety, as having taught me first of all to lead Thee, my Lord, pray to You in reverence, trust in You alone in troubles, sorrows and illnesses and keep Your Commandments; for his (her) concern for my spiritual success, for the warmth he (she) brought for me, prayers before You and for all the gifts he (she) asked me from You, reward him (her) with Your mercy, Your heavenly blessings and joys in Your eternal Kingdom. For you are the God of mercies and generosity and love for mankind. Thou art the peace and joy of Thy faithful servants, and to Thee we send glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Widower's prayers for his wife

Christ Jesus, Lord and Almighty! In contrition and tenderness of my heart, I pray to You: rest, O Lord, the soul of Your departed servant (name), in Your Heavenly Kingdom. Lord Almighty! You favored the marital union of husband and wife, when you said: it is not good for man to be alone; let us create for him a helper according to him. You have sanctified this union in the image of the spiritual union of Christ with the Church. I believe, Lord, and confess that You have blessed me to unite me in this holy union with one of Your handmaids. By your good and wise will you deigned to take away from me this servant of yours, whom you gave to me as a helper and companion of my life. I bow before Your will and pray to You with all my heart, accept my prayer for Your servant (name) and forgive her if you sin in word, deed, thought, knowledge and ignorance; Love earthly things more than heavenly things; Even if you care more about the clothing and decoration of your body than about the enlightenment of the clothing of your soul; or even careless about your children; if you upset anyone by word or deed; If you murmur in your heart against your neighbor or judge someone or something else that you have done that is evil. Forgive her all this, for she is good and philanthropic; for there is no man who will live and not sin. Do not enter into judgment with Thy servant, as Thy creation, do not condemn her to eternal torment for her sin, but have mercy and mercy according to Thy great mercy. I pray and ask You, Lord of Powers, to grant me throughout the days of my life to never cease to pray for Your departed servant, and even until the end of my life to ask her from You, the Judge of the whole world, for forgiveness of her sins. Yes, just as You, God, have placed a crown of stone on her head, crowning her here on earth; Thus crown me with Thy eternal glory in Thy Heavenly Kingdom, with all the saints who rejoice there, and together with them may eternally sing Thy all-holy name with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Widow's prayer for her husband

Christ Jesus, Lord and Almighty! You are the consolation of the weeping, the intercession of the orphans and widows. You said: call on Me in the day of your sorrow, and I will destroy you. In the days of my sorrow, I run to You and pray to You: do not turn Your face away from me and hear my prayer brought to You with tears. You, Lord, Lord of all, have blessed me to unite me with one of Your servants, so that we may be one body and one spirit; You gave me this servant as a companion and protector. It was Your good and wise will that you would take this servant of Yours away from me and leave me alone. I bow before this Your will and I resort to You in the days of my sorrow: quench my sorrow about separation from Your servant, my friend. Even if you took it away from me, do not take your mercy away from me. Just as you once accepted two mites for a widow, so accept this prayer of mine. Remember, Lord, the soul of Your departed servant (name), forgive him all his sins, voluntary and involuntary, whether in word, or in deed, or in knowledge and ignorance, do not destroy him with his iniquities and do not consign him to eternal torment, but according to Your great mercy and according to the multitude of Thy compassions, weaken and forgive all his sins and commit them with Thy saints, where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing, but endless life. I pray and ask You, Lord, grant that all the days of my life I will not cease to pray for Your departed servant, and even before my departure, ask You, the Judge of the whole world, to forgive all his sins and to place him in the heavenly abodes that You have prepared for those who love Cha. For even if you sin, do not depart from You, and undoubtedly the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is Orthodox even until your last breath of confession; impute to him the same faith, even in You, instead of works: for there is no man who will live and not sin, You are the only one besides sin, and Your righteousness is righteousness forever. I believe, Lord, and confess that You will hear my prayer and do not turn Your face away from me. Seeing a widow weeping green, you were merciful, and you brought her son to the grave, carrying her to the grave; thus, having compassion, calmed down my sorrow. Just as You opened the doors of Your mercy to Your servant Theophilus, who went to You, and You forgave him for his sins through the prayers of Your Holy Church, heeding the prayers and alms of his wife: here and I pray to You, accept my prayer for Your servant, and bring him in to eternal life. For You are our hope, You are God, to have mercy and to save, and to You we send glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Notes:

1 The text “Following the departure of the soul from the body” can be found in almost any Orthodox prayer book.

2 When we see the indication “name” in the prayer book, then instead of this word we pronounce the name of the person being commemorated.

3 The text of the Easter Canon can be found in almost every Orthodox prayer book.

4 In the Sacrament of Unction (Blessing of Oil), when the body is anointed with consecrated oil, the grace of God is called upon a person, healing mental and physical infirmities.

(Everyone is alive with God. Orthodox burial rite. M.: Blagovest, 2011)