Why We Pray for the Departed
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- Опубліковано 11 жов 2024
- Excerpt from "The Mystery of Christ: An Athonite Catechism (Lesson 17) - Prophecies: The Public Ministry and Passion of Christ" by Fr. Peter Heers
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Memory Eternal , αιώνια η μνήμη we must keep them in our prayers every day 🙏🏻
We commend the souls of our dear departed to God's mercy.
The good thief on the cross next to Jesus said " Remember Me, Jesus when you come into your kingdom!"
That's what We do when we pray for the departed
We pray " Remember THEM O Lord when You enter the glory of Your kingdom!"
There is Nothing wrong with asking God to have mercy ...on Anyone
Christ is LORD of the Living And the Departed ( Dead)
God bless you Father Peter!
Your words are more valuable than diamonds.
Thank you, Father Peter.
The trisagion can be recited for our departed. God hears our hearts plea for their souls
Brothers & Sisters pls pray for the recently reposed German Athonite monk Abbot Paisios (Jung). Memory eternal.
Memory eternal to the souls of our sleeping. Holy Mother panagia save and have mercy on the souls that have fallen asleep, name by name.
Last Sunday after Divine Liturgy there were prayers for someone's husband. I have never been so impressed and so deeply moved in my life.
I am an inquirer, and I wonder if they do the same for saints who repose?
Yes, the services for the departed are based on deep truths. They both reflect appropriate grief that death has separated us and yet give us great hope and comfort. True comfort. Not what comes from the world. I have sung in such services and been touched by them. Now have seen it from the other side. Yes. Enjoy your journey to the Orthodox Church. It is worth every trial.
I forgot to tell you that I am using my husband's phone. My Orthodox name is Mary.
About your question: someone longer in the Faith than I should answer the saints' funerals question.
There are often reasons to believe that someone who has departed is a saint, but I believe that the services are usually consistent with what their role/position was. Canonization doesn't take place immediately anyway..
But someone better than I can tell you more .
@@williamphillips3330 Thank you! Your last sentence gives me hope, as my husband is a Sola Scriptura Dispensational Protestant, and it is hard going...
@janen668 yes, Jane(n), I know it can be difficult. The comments on Orthodox sites from such believers rather amaze me at times with their vociferousness. It is something they seem to trust in so deeply that they forcefully resist letting go of it.
A very nice Baptist man answered me a while back about his being drawn to the Orthodox Church but of his having a hard time giving up the assurance he has. I told him that I am grateful that I grew up in a simple prnst church that was not calvinist. We had a cappella singing, full immersion baptism, not 3x though, weekly Communion, but not the real thing, etc. So it had elements of Orthodox ideas. We didn't have 'assurance ', but we had hope. The Orthodox Church doesn't teach 'assurance' either, even as we in the Church have a deeper hope than we had outside of it. So giving up 'assurance' wasn't hard for me. I quickly began to cling to the Church and have not had one moment of regret. Not one moment.
I hope you are talking to the priest there and the members. They will have good advice for you and give you support. You have no choice but to take this day by day. I have no advice..except to stay close to the Church. It has already touched your heart.
I often, often encourage that seekers and members buy the 2volume PROLOGUE OF OHRID. Of St. Nikolai Velimirovich. (READ about him on an Orthodox site. I dearly love him. He was Serbian. Even a prisoner in Dachau. Taught at St. Tikhon's in PA. Reposed there.)
This extraordinary work is a calendar of selected saints, with homilies, reflections, scriptures to read, etc. It is an AMAZING work. Beautifully written..Deeply reflective. It was my daily companion on my journey to the Orthodox Church. My husband loved it also. St. Nikolai is called The Second Chrysostom, for a reason. If you don't know yet who St. John Chrysostom was/is, someone at church can tell you.
The Prologue is rather expensive BUT IS WORTH EVERY PENNY. and can help you your whole life.
I entered the Church before my husband did
. He wanted to but had to delay his entry. But we knew that we both entered It on the Lord Schedule.
RE: assurance. One aspect of the Orthodox Church which one sees with all the saints, and which becomes clear as I now think about it in terms of the Prologue, is that there isn't any history in It which includes assurance. The dear saints struggled with anything and everything that needed to be overcome so that they could be saved.
There was purpose in what they did. No assurance was handed to them. But they triumphed. That is why we seek their help and their prayers.
Well, God bless you on this journey.
.☦️📿💜📿☦️ Linda/MARY
You helped me understand why those who are not Orthodox Christian don't understand, or at least back in the 80s and before, didn't at all. No matter how many generations my family had lived and were born in the US, being Eastern Orthodox Christian (Greek Orthodox Christian) was always so "foreign" to everyone else around us. Except for that one time when Mr Mister made that still popular rock song KYRIE (ELEISON down the road that I must travel). We lived in a predominantly Catholic / Protestant neighborhood. The kids on the block kept saying he is singing in Greek, in amazement. I just shrugged. Couldn't understand the significance of it for them, being so young.
As Father Thomas Hopko pointed out, God exists outside of time. Therefore, He considers your prayer before you ask it.
Do orthodox Christian pray for all dead, even those who died as unbelievers?
I'm trying to get my head around this. I wish you would have just assumed that we were catechumens. We are and we want to truly understand this within the life of the Church. It's true there's no repentance after death so I'm assuming that the flame 🔥 may be lowered ever so slightly by our prayers for those who are currently in hell. That's the only way I could see the Lord could have mercy on those who have rejected Him.
Don't focus on it. As you grow in phromena these things slowly come into focus thru the lense of the faith
Billy is correct. As you grow into orthodoxy it becomes self evident. You will attend an Orthodox funeral or see a memorial service and you will just know. A little while after that you'll feel a need to pray for the departed. No need to rush or feel like you need to learn everything quickly. Orthodoxy simply unfolds in your life as you practice it.
Hell is after the Resurrection and final judgment. But we pray for all as God is most merciful.
Father said what he's saying is not for those who have rejected Christ, but for those who fell short. Most of us will fall into this category.
@@agiasf7330ok then what would he say regarding those who rejected Christ, like what if we have family members like this?
This only applies to unfaithful members if the church? I was under the initial impression that even those who had rejected him could still be prayed for.
Fr Heers, how can one think that petitions for the departed avail nothing??? How would they explain Lazarus when Christ said come out or the son of the widow??? Hades could not hold them. You would think that they would think much is still possible for the dead. Correct my faulty understanding if you have the time.
Think the toll gates post departure then the understanding is gained of why we must pray for those that have fallen asleep.
What version of bible do you use in your parish Fr. Heers? Is it the same version that your parishioners use?
I'm wondering about the status of people who are cremated after their funeral? For example, i know of an Orthodox lady who had a normal funeral and was put in a crypt, but years later the family had her taken out and cremated in order to use the crypt for the lady's sister. Obviously she had a proper funeral and was later cremated without her consent.
Would this affect her soul's status? Would the church still pray for her? To my uninformed mind, it seems like it wouldn't affect her, but someone said it was effectively damning her.
It won't affect her soul at all and 'yes' the Church will still pray for her. ☦
@@marcokite that's good to hear! I would imagine maybe the family would have to answer for it? Or did they discover a loophole?
@@fractal_3Well considering that dead bodies depending on the temperature and the acidity of the soil can decompose completely without even bones left I don't think there's a loophole with the case you mentioned since most bodies reach that state with a few hundred years. It's actually quite rare for bones to be preserved after that time, for that there needs to be specific environmental conditions.
If she wasn't involved in the decision other than being placed into the crypt in the manner of the church, she can still have memorials.
@@smolcutie1773 interesting! So it sounds like you're saying since the body would eventually pretty much be gone anyway, then it wouldn't matter?
In this particular case I'm asking about, the crypt is cement, above ground and inside a building. I don't know if the lady was embalmed. I don't know if Orthodox forbids that? She was taken out and cremated when her sister died, appx 3 years after her own passing. Not sure what her body looked like at that point, but certainly her body/bones still existed.
If it had been an in-ground burial, it would have also been in a cement lined grave. I'm not sure how much the soil acidity would affect that.
I’m really concerned for my parents but they’re not interested in religion or repentance in any way :/
Pray for them and try your best to life a good life according to Christ. The best form of evangelism is when you live a holy life; God's work in you inspires others to live the same. In the end, your parents must choose for themselves out of their own free will whether or not to follow Christ.
Then they best know the answer to the riddle of steel.
But there are situations in the scripture where someone praying changed Gods mind. If protestants base everything on the bible alone, why have so few actually read it?
I might of missed it but is it Biblical? Is it said anywhere in the Bible that so and so went to hell and because someone prayed for them that they went to heaven?
No
Did the Lord bring Lazarus from Hades?
How about the son of the widow of Nain?
All things are possible WITH GOD.
There is no *repentance* in Hades. There is God, however, and thus also the LOVE of GOD shown forth in our hearts and offered up in loving prayer for the departed. Is this to NO avail? God and the Church are powerless to help?
Why can’t the soul repent in Hades? Obviously there are some people who will never get it til they’re there. Why not let them experience it for a while and then repent in Hades?
Thank you for asking that. I had the same question. Repentance is only valid with the soul in the body?
The Lord told a whole parable about this in the Gospel - about the rich man and Lazarus. All the answers are there.
@@OrtodoxApologia yes I’m very aware of that parable. But then how can praying for them in hades be valid? The Lord said there is a huge chasm in place so that those who are there may NOT pass over to where Lazarus was. He didn’t say anything about the ability for the living to pray for the soul of the rich man to be able to cross over to Abraham’s bosom by their prayers. Don’t get me wrong, I pray for my departed family members all the time and hope they are in heaven but don’t really know if my prayers do any good.
@jpage99999 In the Confession of the Jerusalem Council of 1672, which was accepted by all the Autocephalous Churches, is the Symbolic Book of the Orthodox Church, which is essentially equal to the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, was said: "Those who have fallen into mortal sins, but have not died in despair, but have repented while still in the life of the body, although they have not brought forth any fruit of repentance by shedding tears, kneeling vigilance in prayer, contrition, consolation of the poor, and in general by expressing in deeds love for God and neighbor - that which the Catholic Church from the very beginning rightly called satisfaction - their souls go to hell and suffer there the retribution for the sins they have committed. But they know of their future release from thence and are delivered by the Supreme Goodness, thanks to the prayers of the priests and the good works which the relatives of each of them perform for their departed; and especially great is the power of the bloodless Sacrifice, which each one performs separately for his departed relatives, and the Catholic and Apostolic Church - daily for all in general. It follows, however, to imply that we do not know the time of [their] liberation. For we know and believe that such will be liberated from [this] terrible situation before the general Resurrection and Judgment, but when, we do not know."
@@jpage99999 we pray for them because they cannot pray for themselves anymore. And we pray to God to have mercy on them and save them, not in order for us to move their soul to somewhere else
So the reason one person goes to heaven and another goes to Hell is because more people prayed for them?
No, not primarily or only. Prayers for departed Orthodox Christians who had a life in Christ but lived without mindfulness and care -- for such as these, since they were members of the Body of Christ Which is Risen, is efficacious to console and move -- by the love of God and the faithful.
There is no *repentance* in Hades, i.e. reorientation and return on his own, but there is GOD and HIS LOVE and our love for the departed is united in prayer with HIS LOVE and with God all things are possible.