Homily on Ancestors Saturday in the 2nd Week of Great Lent: About Prayer for the Dead

Homily on Ancestors Saturday* in the 2nd Week of Great Lent

About Prayer for the Dead

By Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)

(Delivered in 1961)

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Beloved brothers and sisters, you did well to come to church today, to gather together to offer up your fervent prayers to the Throne of God for departed fathers, brothers, sisters and all our relatives, for all deceased Orthodox Christians. The duty of love for our neighbors obliges us to pray for the departed who have passed into eternity. Their fate is unknown to us, but we must certainly pray for them, because this is very good for them and this is of great benefit to us. By praying for the deceased, we thereby testify to our love for them, express compassion and mercy. And the Lord said that blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy (Matthew 5:7). Moreover, if our neighbor, for whom we pray, has pleased the Lord, then he himself already has boldness before the Lord and can offer his prayers before Him for us.

The Church adopted the custom of praying for the departed from the Apostles themselves and has always prayed and will continue to pray for them until the end of time. Saint John Chrysostom writes: “It is not in vain that the Apostles legislated to remember the dead at the Terrible Mysteries. They knew that this would be of great benefit to the deceased, a great deed.” The Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church of all times preached in the ears of everyone that a change in the fate of the deceased was possible before the General Judgment.

Saint John Chrysostom says: “There is an opportunity to ease the punishment of a dead sinner. If we make frequent prayers for him and give alms, then, even if he is unworthy in himself, God will hear us.” And from Saint Augustine we read: “It canno be denied that the souls of the dead are benefited by the piety of their living friends, who offer the sacrifice of the Mediator, or give alms in the church on their behalf. But these services are of advantage only to those who during their lives have earned such merit, that services of this kind can help them. For there is a manner of life which is neither so good as not to require these services after death, nor so bad that such services are of no avail after death; there is, on the other hand, a kind of life so good as not to require them; and again, one so bad that when life is over they render no help.”

There are many examples when fervent prayer for the departed saved them from a painful state. Let us give one reliable example, described by the third century holy martyr Perpetua. “Once,” writes the martyr, “in prison, during a common prayer, I accidentally pronounced the name of my deceased brother Dinocrates. Struck by the unexpectedness, I began to pray and sigh for him before God. The next night I had a vision.

I see Dinocrates emerging from a dark place, very hot and thirsty, unclean in appearance and pale; on his face there is a wound with which he died. There was a great gulf between me and him, so that we could not get closer to each other. Near the place where Dinocrates stood there was a full reservoir, the edge of which was much higher than the height of my brother, and Dinocrates stretched out, trying to get water. I regretted that the height of the edge prevented my brother from getting drink.

Immediately after this I woke up and realized that my brother was in agony. Believing that prayer could help him in his suffering, I prayed days and nights in prison with cries and tears that he would be given to me. On that day, on which we remained bound in chains, a new phenomenon appeared to me: the place that I had previously seen as dark became bright and Dinocrates, clean in face and in beautiful clothes, was enjoying the coolness. Where he had a wound, I see only a trace of it, and the edge of the reservoir was now no more than the height of the boy’s waist, and he could easily get water from there.

On the edge stood a golden bowl full of water; Dinocrates approached and began to drink from it, and the water did not decrease. That was the end of the vision. Then I realized that he was freed from punishment.”

Blessed Augustine, in explanation of this story, says that Dinocrates was illumined by Holy Baptism, but was carried away by the example of his pagan father and was unsteady in the faith and died after some sins, common at his age. For such infidelity to the Christian faith, he suffered, but through the prayers of his holy sister he was freed.

Therefore, my beloveds, as long as the militant Church remains on earth with its benefits, the lot of dead sinners can still change for the better. How much consolation there is for a sorrowful heart, how much light there is for a perplexed mind in Christianity! Rays of light pour from it into the dark kingdom of the dead.

Beloved brothers and sisters, the goodness of the Savior has provided us with the means to alleviate the lot of our dead brethren, let us not be inattentive to the will of Heavenly Goodness, and let us not be cruel to our neighbors. We will do what is possible for us, we will pray for them with the prayers of the Holy Church, we will give alms for them. If not for them, then for ourselves we will be merciful. After all, will the Lord be merciful to us when we were unmerciful to those redeemed by His Blood? Will we remain truly Christians if we do not do deeds of love?

When commemorating the dead, we must always remember that we, if not now, then tomorrow, will certainly go after them to another, Eternal Life, because a person does not disappear without a trace, since he has an immortal soul that does not die. What we see when dying is the visible gross body, and what lives in it is the invisible subtle force, which is usually called the soul.

The body itself testifies to its mortality, because it is destructible and divisible, but the soul, on the contrary, has a simple spiritual indestructible being and cannot decompose into its component parts, like the body, and cannot die. The soul is immortal. The soul has an indivisible, unmerged unity; throughout its life it feels within itself one constant existence. Our body participates in life as if against its will, being set in motion by the power of the soul, always burdening it with its laziness. The soul, on the contrary, always continues its independent life and activity, even when the activity of the body is stopped by sleep, or illness, or death. Belief in the immortality of the soul existed among all peoples and at all times, even among pagan and savage tribes.

What is proof of the immortality of our soul? First of all, the word of God convinces us that the human soul is immortal. Even in Old Testament times, Ecclesiastes said: "And the dust will return to the earth, as it was; and the spirit will return to God, who gave it" (Eccl. 12:7). And in another place the Wise One says: "God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity" (Wis. 2:23). God allowed Job to be tempted only over his body and over his property, but did not allow the evil one to touch his soul.

The entire New Testament is a statement of our faith in the immortality of the soul and our hope for a future resurrection. The Lord Jesus Christ, by His teaching and deeds, affirmed this faith and hope when He said that He came into the world so that "whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:15); and again: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever keeps My word will never see death" (John 8:51).

In addition, the Lord commands all Christians, especially preachers of the word of God: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but fear Him more who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna" (Matthew 10:28), and by this He also clearly says that the soul is immortal.

Even the most common sense must recognize the truth of the immortality of the human soul. Look carefully at a person: what is his heart looking for, what does it strive for? Why is his soul not satisfied with anything in this world, not content? Another person has all the possible pleasures on earth and, yet, again looks for something and does not find it. Another person wants to quench the thirst of his soul with worldly pleasures and amusements, but all this leaves only emptiness in the soul, languor of the spirit, and the person seeks some new pleasures and again does not find joy in them.

All this proves the truth that the human soul cannot satisfy its inner thirst for bliss with anything in this world. This is why God awakened this insatiable thirst in the soul of man, so that through this he could point him to another, better life, so that man would not stop at temporary pleasures, but would strive for the honor of the highest calling of God.

Do we pay attention to the ability of our soul to know? How vast is the circle of human knowledge, what a vast store of objects the memory contains, what an endless space the imagination traverses in an instant, what lofty objects the intellect perceives and explains! And the wider the circle of a person’s knowledge, the greater the thirst for acquiring it awakens in his soul. What does this unquenchable thirst for knowledge mean, if not that the complete satisfaction of the soul with knowledge should only happen there, beyond the grave?

If you pay attention to human life itself, then in it you can find important proof of the immortality of the human soul. How do we spend most of our lives? Is it not in sorrows and disasters? Some struggle with illness, others with adversity, others suffer from poverty and deprivation, others endure the malice of their enemies or suffer grief from their envy and slander. It is difficult to find a person who would not be familiar with misfortunes, who could say: “I am happy and blessed!” And how many such sufferers are there who, from the very cradle, are met with sorrows and illnesses and do not part with them until the grave! How can one explain the purpose of human existence if one takes away the soul’s immortality? Is the fate of humans and dumb animals really the same? How then is man superior to them? Is it only because he endures more sorrows and misfortunes than the dumb animals? But the word of God resolves this bewilderment, saying: "We know that when our earthly house, this hut, is destroyed, we have from God a dwelling in heaven, a house not made with hands, eternal" (2 Cor. 5:1). Amen.

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* The Russian Church established three commemorations in the Lenten season known as Ancestors Saturday, which fall on Saturdays of the second, third and fourth weeks of Great Lent. They were established so that our reposed family and friends would not be deprived of prayer and intercession during the period of Great Lent, when the Divine Liturgy is not fully celebrated on most of the Lenten days.