“With the saints give rest O Christ to the soul[s] of Your servant[s] where there is no
sickness nor sorrow nor sighing, but life everlasting” (Prayer at Funerals and Requiems).
Consistent with our faith in the Lord to care for all those whom we cannot see, including those throughout the world whom we know or do not know, for the infants developing in the wombs of their mothers, for the apostles, prophets, martyrs and saints of the past, we include quite naturally and logically our own loved ones departed this life before us. To me it’s not a matter of “Why not?’ but “How could I do otherwise?” Something so self-evident was not simple to explain. I was writing to a Protestant theologian, Evangelical in fact, who wrote that it was a stumbling block for him in considering entering the Orthodox Church. He was discussing our differences and he was right—this distinction quite well may be insurmountable. If he should come to our Divine Liturgy and fail to realize, much less see with a spiritual vision the presence of “all those who have gone before us to their rest,” as the post-consecration prayer puts it so eloquently, then we may be physically in the same temple, but we are worlds apart. Here’s what St. Cyril of Jerusalem had to say:
“Following this, we pray for the holy fathers and bishops who have fallen asleep, and in general for all those who have fallen asleep before us, in the belief that it is a great benefit to the souls for whom the prayers are offered, while the holy and magnificent victim himself is present…. In the same way, by offering to God our prayers for those who have fallen asleep and who have sinned, we…offer Christ sacrificed for the sins of all, and by doing so, obtain the loving God’s favor for them and for ourselves.”
Note: for all those who have fallen asleep. This is not a euphemism to avoid the stark realism of death. This is not intended for children, as though we were easing their anguish with pretense. The souls of those gone before us to their rest await the return of the Lord, when all will be judged and given, if deserving, the glorious gift of eternal life praising and glorifying the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you mean by ‘death’ the loss of existence, they surely are not dead but alive in Christ. Dissolution, yes—the body returns to the earth from which it came, disintegrating into its component molecules. But not the soul.
Personally, for more than two score years of priesthood and uncounted thousands of requiems and funerals, I have always felt that my prayers were as much with those fallen asleep as they had been for them. Those poignant prayers center my soul. They bring serenity and comfort, because they are hyphens embracing my existence. Where else is there such a sustained paean to eternity? I’m reminded of the phrase in Psalm 103:15 that I am the man whose days are like grass; as a flower of the field….For the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” But thank the good Lord, that’s not all I am. I am also one who has the opportunity to be by grace all that Christ is by nature. It’s not too much, not even too arrogant and ambitious to realize that I am the blade of grass that thinks, that prays, that can reach out and receive that mind-boggling gift of eternal life. How dare I refuse, if God Himself wants me to have it? And as I waft my incense upwards I plead that those I love may not be turned away. Please, Lord, let them have what only Your inconceivable love can make happen. What sort of theology calling itself Christian can not want those precious gifts that Christ came to earth in order to offer us?