prayers for the departed

It seems that every forty days someone in my family's extended circle passes away. For forty days after someone's passing, our family says this prayer every evening before bedtime:

"Have mercy, O Lord, on the soul of Thy departed servant ______ and grant them eternal rest in Thy Kingdom, where sickness and sorrow are no more, neither sighing, but life ever-lasting. Amen"

For the last year, we've said a new name almost every forty days (or somewhat close to it). I am actually considering putting together a "wall of the departed" with their pictures in our room under the cross. It would both serve as a reminder to pray for them all and as a reality check for our lives.

I just read the article Prayers for the Dead: Pannikhida by Bishop Alexander (Mileant). It is a short explanation of the Orthodox belief of our fate after death and the importance of prayers for the dead.

The more I understand and take in these Orthodox understandings, the more hope and peace I have for my own passing through death. Heaven for me is becoming less and less like an 'empty white room' and more like a community of people lovingly praying and helping each other to the glory of God. I am also more aware of the fact that the spiritual realm I will encounter after the death of my body is not supposed to be unfamiliar and that the goal of this life is to learn how to live in unison with the Holy Spirit, His saints (here and departed) and angels--life as it was meant to be lived in the garden, a perfect mystical union of the physical and of the spiritual.

From the article, here are some reality checks for me:

"Man is given life in order to learn how to believe, to do good, and to develop his talents. All of these things make up his spiritual riches, or, in the words of the Saviour, his "treasure in heaven." Death sums up the life of a person, and his soul must then come before God for an accounting, to receive its reward or punishment."

"While a person lives, God gives him the chance to repent and correct his shortcomings. After death, the possibility of repentance is removed. Still, if a person dies and is not deserving of paradise, this does not mean that he is doomed to eternal torment. Until the Last Judgment, the torments of sinners in hell are temporary and can be relieved or even removed by the prayers of believing people and the Church."

About the judgment the soul receives just after "falling asleep":

"But the judgment which follows soon after death is not yet the final judgment, because only the soul is being judged, without the body. About the existence of this preliminary judgment the Apostle Paul wrote: "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27). At the end of the world, after the universal resurrection of the dead, there will be the universal Last Judgment, at which God will judge all people simultaneously. Then each person will receive either eternal reward or eternal punishment with his or her resurrected body.

"Thus, there exist two states after death: one for the souls of the righteous, in paradise; the other for the souls of sinners, in hell. (The Orthodox Church does not accept the Roman Catholic teaching about an intermediate state in Purgatory. The church fathers usually attribute the word "Gehenna" to the state after the Last Judgment, when both death and hell will be cast into a fiery lake, cf. Rev. 20:15)."

Physical death is no longer the end for us nor for our relationships with one another:

"In order to appreciate the power of prayers for the dead, it must be understood that death interrupts only the physical contact among people; spiritual contact continues. This contact is realized through prayer....Thus, prayer joins our world with another world, where the angels, the saints and our departed relatives and friends dwell. Since the moment of the resurrection of Christ death has lost its former fatality; instead, it has become the beginning of a new life....Christians who have departed from this world do not sever their ties to the Church to which they belonged during their life."

"Prayers for the dead always benefit them. If they were not deemed worthy of heaven, these prayers alleviate their fate beyond the grave, and if they are in paradise, these prayers give them joy and an increase of light."


(I have posted a lot from the article here. You may just want to go read the whole thing if you're interested. Father Alexander's website is such a great resource for such articles.)
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