3/9/2024
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 18
The Saturdays of commemorations of the dead are called ancestral Saturdays (the first universal commemoration on Meat Fare Saturday, the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of Great Lent, Trinity Saturday, and St. Demetrius Saturday). Why do these take place specifically on Saturdays? What are the historical roots of this tradition? They were not all instituted at the same time.
Rating: 7.3|Votes: 29
Since throughout the Great Fast such commemorations as are performed at every other time during the year do not occur during the celebration of the Presanctified Liturgy, it is the accepted practice in our Orthodox Church to commemorate the departed on these three Saturdays, that the dead be not deprived of the Church's saving intercession. (The remaining Saturdays of the Great Fast are consecrated to special celebrations: Saturday of the first week to St. Theodore the Recruit; Saturday of the fifth week to the praise of the Theotokos; the sixth Saturday commemorates the resurrection of the Righteous Lazarus.)
St. John of Shanghai
Rating: 7.9|Votes: 13
Our grief for our loved ones who have died should be inconsolable and boundless, had the Lord not given us eternal life. Our life would be senseless if it ended in death. What benefit would there be from virtue, or from good deeds? Then they would be right who say, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!”
Hieromonk Vasily (Roslyakov)
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
Today we too, in approaching the coffin of our holy Father Ambrose, Elder of Optina, rejoice with same inexpressible joy of Christ’s resurrection. Hymning the Tomb of our Savior, we say, “How life-giving, how much more beautiful than paradise, and more resplendent than any royal palace proved Thy tomb, oh Christ, the source of our Resurrection!” And in the troparion to St. Ambrose we sing, “As to a healing spring do we come to thee, Oh Ambrose, our father!”
Presvytera Vassi Haros
Rating: 3.5|Votes: 4
With Great Lent quickly approaching the Church is preparing not only to guide the living to repentance, but also to offer up prayers on behalf of those who have departed, an essential mark of Orthodox piety and worship. Saturday February 21/March 5 marks the first Soul Saturday, followed by the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of the Great Fast.
Archpriest Andrei Chizhenko
Before Meatfare Sunday, the Sunday of the Last Judgment, the Holy Church has established a universal Ancestors' Meatfare Saturday, on which we perform memorial services for all Orthodox Christians who have fallen asleep from the beginning until now.
Hieromonk Pavel (Shcherbachev)
The thought of death is a kind of timebomb, a minefield for the modern liberal ideology that is being inculcated from all fronts into the minds and hearts of people living on earth.
St. Mardarije (Uskoković)
Philosophy will never be able to base faith in eternal life. And the human soul cannot be satisfied with a single philosophical theory. Needed is a voice from heaven that would proclaim eternal life; and there was this Voice.
St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), Archbishop of Crimea
To my great sorrow, some of you have started going to sectarian gatherings and have been infected with their false teachings.Some have been infected with the false teaching that we shouldn’t pray for the dead, that we shouldn’t give alms for their repose.
Yuri Ruban
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 16
The divine service texts open to us in detail the “theology of death and resurrection”.
Archpriest Pavel Gumerov
Rating: 9.3|Votes: 20
But we, Orthodox Christians, must dissolve our sorrow with Christian hope, that if we ourselves will be saved, and if we will save our loved ones by our prayers, then we dare to believe that we will meet them there, in the other life. And if they reach the Heavenly Kingdom, then they will certainly pray for us there.
Ksenia Manyakova
Rating: 8.7|Votes: 7
A candle burns on the table for the reposed, weeping waxen tears. My heart also weeps vaguely... how are you over there? How are you?...Give rest, O Lord!...
Rating: 9.1|Votes: 14
How can we help our loved ones who have departed this life? Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) talks about the commemoration of the dead.
Hieromartyr John of Riga
Rating: 7.3|Votes: 4
It could be that a soul has left this world for the spiritual world without having drawn close to the holy inhabitants of that world through prayer; he may have appeared in that higher sphere as one entering a strange and unfamiliar land and may not find any spiritual 'relative' in this upper Sion. Take in the stranger; give rest to the beggar; give him a place to rest his head, and the Lord will grant the soul, for whom you do this, one of the bright dwellings in His Father's mansion.
