§ 219. Prayers for the Dead

The communion of prayer is not limited only to the living members of the Church, but extends also to the deceased members, for whose souls the living pray to God and church services are performed, especially the Liturgy. The custom of praying and holding memorials for the departed already existed in the Old Testament church,[1] and passed from it into the New Testament Church. In the Apostolic Constitutions the faithful’s duty to pray and to offer sacrifice to God for the souls of the departed is spoken of, and it is ordained that memorials for the departed be held on the third, ninth, and fortieth day after death, and especially that their yearly remembrance be kept with a church service and good works.[2]

Today the commemoration of the departed takes place at every divine service, and especially at the Liturgy. Besides this, the Church has established particular days in the year that are dedicated exclusively to the commemoration of the dead, and these are the Soul Saturdays,[3] when God is prayed to and the Liturgy is served for all the fathers and brethren who have ended their earthly life as Christians, and likewise for those who died suddenly and could not be given the funeral rite by the Church. At every other time, however, apart from certain days appointed by the church typikon, memorials for individual deceased persons may be held, and are held, with a lesser or greater church service.[4]

By the canons, in the Orthodox Church there may be prayers and memorials only for those who died in communion with the Church, and hence this cannot be done for the heterodox. This has been forbidden from the very beginning of the Church, so that the canons not only do not permit the possibility of praying for the heterodox, but forbid also all praying together (συνεύχεσθαι μόνον) with them, just as with those excommunicated from the Church.[5] And the canons of a later period strictly forbid visiting the cemeteries of the heterodox, and ordain that their fellowship is to be avoided, not only in liturgical matters but also in private life.[6] Accordingly, the Orthodox Church, as the representative of eternal truth, can pray only for her own, who believe in that truth, and not for others, who do not acknowledge that truth, or who profess as truth what the Orthodox Church does not recognize as evangelical teaching.[7]

PART V. The Relation of the Church to the State and to Those Who Do Not Belong to the Church.