Burial of Christians. Funeral according to Christian customs

Customs, rituals, traditions, signs

Everyone decides for himself to believe or not to believe in omens, to observe or not to observe rituals and traditions, but do not lead the observance to the point of absurdity.

How to spend the last journey of a loved one, without harming yourself and your loved ones? Usually this sad event takes us by surprise, and we get lost, listening to everyone and following their advice. But, as it turns out, not everything is so simple. Sometimes people use this sad event to hurt you. Therefore, remember how to properly lead a person on their last journey.

At the moment of death, a person experiences a painful feeling of fear when the soul leaves the body. When leaving the body, the soul meets the Guardian Angel, given to it during Holy Baptism, and demons. The relatives and friends of the dying person should try to alleviate his mental suffering by prayer, but in no case should they shout loudly or sob.

At the moment of separation of the soul from the body, it is supposed to read the Canon of prayer to the Mother of God. When reading the Canon, a dying Christian holds in his hand a lighted candle or a holy cross. If he lacks the strength to cross himself with the sign of the cross, this is done by someone close to him, bending over to the dying man and clearly saying: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. In Thy hand, O Lord Jesus, I commend my spirit, O Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. "

You can sprinkle holy water on a dying person with the words: "The grace of the Holy Spirit, who sanctified this water, may deliver your soul from all evil."

According to church custom, a dying person asks for forgiveness from those present and forgives them himself.

Not often, but still it happens that a person prepares a coffin for himself in advance. It is usually kept in the attic. In this case, pay attention to the following: the coffin is empty, and since it is made according to the standards of a person, he begins to "pull" it into himself. And a person, as a rule, dies faster. Previously, to prevent this from happening, sawdust, shavings, grain were poured into an empty coffin. After the death of a person, sawdust, shavings and grain were also buried in the pit. After all, if you feed a bird with such grain, it will get sick.

When a person has died and a measurement is taken from him to make a coffin, in no case should this measure be put on the bed. It is best to take it out of the house and put it in a coffin during the funeral.

Be sure to remove all silver objects from the deceased: after all, this is exactly the metal that is used to fight the unclean. Therefore, the latter can "disturb" the body of the deceased.

The body of the deceased is washed immediately after death. The washing takes place as a sign of the spiritual purity and integrity of the life of the deceased, and also so that he would appear in purity before the face of God after the resurrection. Ablution should cover all parts of the body.

You need to wash your body with warm, not hot water, so as not to steam it. When they wash the body, they read: "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us" or "Lord, have mercy."

As a rule, only elderly women prepare the deceased for their last journey.

In order to make it more convenient to wash the deceased, an oilcloth is laid on the floor or bench and covered with a sheet. The body of the deceased person is placed on top. Take one bowl of clean water, and the other with soapy water. They wash the whole body with a sponge dipped in soapy water, starting from the face and ending with the feet, then wash it with clean water and wipe it off with a towel. Last of all, they wash the head and comb the deceased's hair.

It is advisable that ablution takes place during the daytime - from sunrise to sunset. Water should be handled very carefully after ablution. It is necessary to dig a hole far from the yard, vegetable garden and living quarters, where people do not walk, and pour it all, to the last drop, and fill it with earth.

The fact is that very strong damage is done on the water in which the deceased was washed. In particular, cancer can be “made” on this water. Therefore, do not give this water to anyone, no matter who asks you.

Try not to spill this water around the apartment so that those living in it do not get sick.

Pregnant women should not wash the deceased in order to avoid the illness of the unborn child, as well as women who have their periods.

After ablution, the deceased is dressed in new, light, clean clothes. Be sure to put a cross on the deceased if he did not have one.

The bed on which the person died should not be thrown away, as many do. Just take her to the chicken coop, let her lie there for three nights, so that, as the legend says, the rooster will sing her three times.

Relatives and friends are not allowed to make a coffin.

The shavings formed during the manufacture of the coffin are best buried in the ground or, in extreme cases, thrown into water, but not burned.

When the deceased is placed in a coffin, it is necessary to sprinkle it and the coffin inside and outside with holy water, you can also sprinkle incense.

A whisk is placed on the forehead of the deceased. It is given in the church at the funeral service.

A pillow, which is usually made of cotton wool, is placed under the feet and head of the deceased. The body is covered with a sheet.

The coffin is placed in the middle of the room in front of the icons, turning the face of the deceased with his head towards the icons.

Seeing the deceased in the coffin, do not automatically touch your body with your hands. Otherwise, at the place where you touched, various skin growths in the form of a tumor may grow.

If there is a deceased in the house, then, having met there your friend or relatives, you need to greet with a bow of the head, and not with a voice.

While the deceased is in the house, you should not sweep the floor, as this will bring trouble to your family (illness or worse).

If there is a dead person in the house, do not start any laundry.

Do not put two needles criss-cross on the lips of the deceased, ostensibly to save the body from decomposition. This will not save the body of the deceased, but the needles that were on his lips will surely disappear, they are used to induce damage.

In order to prevent a heavy smell from the deceased, a bunch of dry sage can be put at his head, popularly called "cornflowers". It serves another purpose as well - it drives away evil spirits.

For the same purposes, you can use the branches of the willow, which is holy on Palm Sunday and kept behind images. These branches can be placed under the deceased.

It happens that a deceased person has already been put in a coffin, and the bed on which he died has not yet been taken out. You may be approached by acquaintances or strangers, asking permission to lie on the bed of the deceased, so that their back and bones do not hurt. Don't allow it, don't hurt yourself.

Do not put fresh flowers in the coffin so that a heavy smell does not come from the deceased. For this purpose, use artificial or, in extreme cases, dried flowers.

A candle is lit near the coffin as a sign that the deceased has passed into the realm of light - a better afterlife.

For three days, the Psalter is read over the deceased.

The Psalter is read continuously over the tomb of a Christian as long as the deceased remains unburied.

A lamp or a candle is lit in the house, which burns as long as the deceased is in the house.

It happens that instead of a candlestick, glasses with wheat are used. This wheat is often spoiled and should not be fed to poultry or livestock.

The hands and feet of the deceased are tied. The arms are folded so that the right one is on top. An icon or a cross is placed in the left hand of the deceased; for men - the image of the Savior, for women - the image of the Mother of God. Or you can: in the left hand - a cross, and on the chest of the deceased - the Holy Image.

Make sure that nobody else's belongings are put under the deceased. If you notice this, then you need to pull them out of the coffin and burn them somewhere far away.

Sometimes, unknowingly, some compassionate mothers put photos of their children in the coffin with their grandparents. After that, the child begins to get sick, and if you do not provide assistance in time, it can be fatal.

It happens that there is a dead person in the house, but there are no suitable clothes for him, and then someone from the family gives his things. The deceased is buried, and the one who gave his things starts to get sick.

The coffin is taken out of the house, turning the face of the deceased towards the exit. When the body is taken out, the mourners sing a song in honor of the Holy Trinity: "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us."

It happens that when a coffin with a deceased is taken out of the house, someone stands near the door and begins to tie knots on rags, explaining this by tying knots so that no more coffins are taken out of this house. Although on the mind of such a person is completely different. Try to take these rags away from him.

If a pregnant woman goes to a funeral, she will do herself evil by this. A sick child may be born. Therefore, try to stay at home at this time, and you need to say goodbye to your loved one in advance - before the funeral.

When a dead person is being carried to a cemetery, in no case cross his path, as various tumors may form on your body. If this happened, then you should take the hand of the deceased, necessarily the right one, and with all your fingers drive it over the tumor and read "Our Father". This must be done three times, after each time spitting over the left shoulder.

When they carry a dead man in a coffin down the street, try not to look out of the window of your apartment. By doing this, you will save yourself from trouble and will not get sick.

In the temple, the coffin with the body of the deceased is placed in the middle of the church, facing the altar, and candles are lit on the four sides of the coffin.

Relatives and friends of the deceased walk around the coffin with the body, with a bow they ask for forgiveness for involuntary offenses, they kiss the deceased for the last time (a crown on his forehead or an icon on his chest). After that, the body is completely covered with a sheet and the priest sprinkles it with earth in a cross-like manner.

When the body with the coffin is taken out of the temple, the face of the deceased is turned towards the exit.

It so happens that the church is far from the house of the deceased, then a correspondence funeral service is performed on it. After the funeral service, the relatives are given a chaplet, a prayer of permission and earth from the requiem table.

At home, relatives put a permissive prayer in the deceased's right hand, a paper whisk on his forehead, and after saying goodbye to him, at the cemetery, his body, covered with a sheet from head to toe, as in a church, is sprinkled with earth in a cross-like manner (from head to toe, from the right shoulder to the left - to get the correct cross).

The deceased is buried facing east. The cross on the grave is placed at the feet of the deceased so that the crucifix is ​​turned to the face of the deceased.

According to Christian custom, when a person is buried, his body must be buried or "sealed". This is done by the priests.

The ties that tie the hands and feet of the deceased must be untied and placed in the coffin with the deceased before lowering the coffin into the grave. Otherwise, they are usually used to induce spoilage.

When saying goodbye to the deceased, try not to step on the towel that is placed in the cemetery near the coffin, so as not to incur damage.

If you are afraid of the deceased, hold on to his legs.

Sometimes you can be thrown in your bosom or by the collar of the earth from the grave, proving that this way you can avoid the fear of the dead. Do not believe - this is done to induce damage.

When the coffin with the body of the deceased is lowered into the grave on towels, these towels must be left in the grave, and not used for various household needs or given to someone.

When the coffin with the body is lowered into the grave, all those who accompany the deceased on their last journey throw a lump of earth into it.

After the ritual of surrendering the body to the earth, this earth must be taken to the grave and poured crosswise. And if you are too lazy, do not go to the cemetery and take the land for this ritual from your courtyard, then you yourself will do it very badly.

To bury a dead man with music is not a Christian way; one should bury with a priest.

It so happens that a person was buried, but the body was not betrayed. You must definitely go to the grave and take a handful of earth from there, from which you can then go to the church.

It is advisable, in order to avoid any trouble, to sprinkle the house or apartment where the deceased lived with consecrated water. This must be done immediately after the funeral. It is also necessary to sprinkle such water on people who participated in the funeral procession.

The funeral is over, and according to the old Christian custom, they put water and something from food in a glass on the table for treating the soul of the deceased. Make sure small children or adults do not inadvertently drink or eat anything from this glass. After such a treat, both adults and children start to get sick.

During the commemoration of the deceased, according to tradition, a glass of vodka is poured. Do not drink it if someone advises you. It will be better if you pour the vodka on the grave.

Returning from the funeral, it is imperative to shake off your shoes before entering the house, and also hold your hands over the fire of a lighted candle. This is done in order not to damage the home.

There is also this kind of damage: a dead person lies in the coffin, wires are tied to his hands and feet, which are lowered into a bucket of water under the coffin. So, supposedly, they ground the deceased. In fact, this is not the case. This water is then used to induce spoilage.

Here is another type of corruption, in which incompatible things are present - death and flowers.

One person gives another bouquet of flowers. Only these flowers do not bring joy, but grief, since the bouquet, before being presented, lay on the grave all night.

If one of you has a loved one or a loved one died and you often cry for him, then I advise you to have a thistle herb in your house.

To miss the deceased less, you need to take the headdress (scarf or hat) worn by the deceased, light it in front of the front door and go around all the rooms with him one by one, reading aloud "Our Father". After that, take out the remains of the burned-out headdress from the apartment, burn it to the end and bury the ashes in the ground.

It also happens like this: you came to the grave of a loved one to pull out grass, paint a fence or plant something. You start digging and you dig up things that shouldn't be there. Someone outsider buried them there. In this case, take everything that you find outside the cemetery and burn it, trying not to get caught in the smoke, otherwise you can get sick yourself.

Some believe that after death the forgiveness of sins is impossible, and if a sinful person has died, nothing can help him. However, the Lord himself said: "And every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, and blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven people ... neither in this century, nor in the future." This means that only blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven in the future life. Consequently, our prayers may be for mercy on the deceased in bodies, but our loved ones living in soul, who did not blaspheme during the earthly life of the Holy Spirit.

The funeral service and home prayer for the good deeds of the deceased, performed in his memory (alms and donations to the church), are all good for the dead. But the commemoration at the Divine Liturgy is especially useful for them.

If you come across a funeral procession on your way, you should stop, take off your headdress and cross yourself.

When a dead man is being carried to a cemetery, do not throw fresh flowers on the road after him - by doing this you damage not only yourself, but also many people who step on these flowers.

After the funeral, do not go to visit any of your friends or relatives.

If they take land to “seal” the dead, in no case do not allow this land to be taken from under your feet.

When someone dies, make sure that only women are present.

If the patient is dying hard, remove the pillow of feathers from under his head for an easier death. In villages, a dying person is laid on straw.

Make sure that the deceased's eyes are tightly closed.

Do not leave a deceased person alone in the house; as a rule, elderly women should sit next to him.

When there is a deceased in the house, then in neighboring houses it is forbidden to drink water in the morning, which was in buckets or pans. It must be poured out and poured fresh.

When a coffin is made, a cross is made on its lid with an ax.

In the place where the deceased was lying in the house, it is necessary to put an ax so that they do not die for a long time in this house.

Until 40 days, do not distribute the deceased's belongings to relatives, friends or acquaintances.

In no case do not put your pectoral cross on the deceased.

Before burial, do not forget to remove the wedding ring from the deceased. By this, the widow (widower) will rid herself of diseases.

During the death of your loved ones or acquaintances, you must close the mirrors, do not look in them after death for 40 days.

It is impossible for the tears to drip on the deceased. This is a heavy burden for the deceased.

After the funeral, do not allow your loved ones, acquaintances, or relatives to lie on your bed under any pretext.

When a dead person is taken out of the house, make sure that none of those accompanying him on his last journey comes out with his back.

After taking the deceased out of the house, the old broom should also be taken out of the house.

Before the last farewell to the deceased in the cemetery, when the lid of the coffin is raised, in no case put your head under it.

The coffin with the deceased, as a rule, is placed in the middle of the room in front of the home icons, facing the exit.

As soon as a person has died, relatives and friends should order a forty-mouth in the church, that is, a daily commemoration during the Divine Liturgy.

In no case listen to those people who advise you to wipe your body with water in which you washed the deceased to get rid of pain.

If the commemoration (the third, ninth, fortieth days, anniversary) falls on the time of Great Lent, then in the first, fourth and seventh weeks of Lent, the relatives of the deceased do not invite anyone to the commemoration.

When memorial days fall on weekdays of other weeks of Great Lent, they are postponed to the next (ahead) Saturday or Sunday.

If the commemoration falls on Bright Week (the first week after Easter), then in these first eight days after Easter they do not read prayers for the dead, do not perform requiem for them.

The Orthodox Church allows to commemorate the departed from Tuesday Fomina week (the second week after Easter).

The dead are commemorated with the food that is supposed to be on the day of the commemoration: on Wednesday, Friday, on days of long fasts - lean, in the meat-eater - fast.

The funeral of a person is a rite of burial of the deceased, symbolizing farewell and the end of earthly life and the beginning of a new, eternal one. The entire funeral ritual among the Slavs has both Christian and pagan roots, closely intertwined and no longer separable due to centuries-old foundations.

Orthodox funerals in Russia, perhaps, most fully combined the pre-Christian traditions of burial and the religious rules and order of burial, traditions after the funeral.

This is due to the relative tolerance of Orthodoxy towards pagan remnants, the presence of many social and historical characteristics in various territories of the country.

The burial, burial of the deceased in every culture and religion is accompanied by a certain ceremony and rituals. The mysterious and mystical transition from the kingdom of the living to the kingdom of the dead is beyond the sphere of human understanding, therefore, people, depending on their religious outlook, historical and cultural characteristics, have developed a whole system of rules and traditions for funerals. They should help the deceased to get used to the new world - after all, the overwhelming majority of religions and confessions proceed from the fact that death means only the end of the earthly period of existence.

The ritual ceremony is performed primarily to help the deceased, although at present many mistakenly consider the observable customs of burial and commemoration as a desire to support loved ones and relatives, to share with them the bitterness of loss, a manifestation of a sense of respect for the deceased.

The stages of the funeral, the Orthodox traditions at the funeral in Russia include the following main events and ceremonies, together representing a sequential burial procedure;

• preparation;
• wires;
• funeral service;
• burial;
• remembrance.

Every person has to bury loved ones. It is important to observe the funeral ritual. Russian Orthodox traditions have long been established (including those that are not currently used or are used in remote areas by the Orthodox). There is a mandatory minimum that a person participating in the burial procedure needs to know.

An Orthodox person should know the minimum necessary for the correct construction of a funeral

This information is especially important for believers. Many people come to God in adulthood and do not know some customs, attaching importance to superstitions that have nothing to do with religion and, thereby, not helping the soul of the deceased to enter the afterlife. For non-believers, observing traditions is important out of a sense of respect for the deceased and those who have gathered to conduct him.

Preparing for burial

Preparation is the pre-burial stage of the funeral, which includes several integral ritual events. When preparing the body for burial, some pagan customs are also observed. Death in Christianity is considered as the beginning of the road to a new life, therefore the deceased must be prepared and collected for the road. The preparation of the body of the deceased for the unearthly path has both a religious and mystical content and a sanitary and hygienic component.

Body washing

The deceased must appear before the Creator pure both spiritually and bodily.

The mystical component of the rite is that the washing of the body had to be performed by certain people - washers.

They could not be closely related to the deceased, so that tears would not fall on the body. Mourning for the deceased is not combined with the Christian understanding of death as a transition to eternal life and meeting with God. There is a belief that a mother's tear burns a dead child. Washers were chosen from among the old maidens and widows of people who are clean and do not commit bodily sins. The deceased's underwear and clothing were rewarded for the work.

The body was washed on the floor at the threshold of the house, the deceased was placed with his feet to the stove. Warm water, a comb, and soap were used. It was believed that otherworldly dead forces were transferred to the things used for washing, so it was necessary to get rid of them as soon as possible. The pots, in which there was water for washing, ridges, and soap residues, were thrown into the ravine, taken out to the crossroads, outside the field. The used water was considered dead and poured out in the far corner of the yard, where no people walked and nothing was planted.

All these traditions are a reflection of the mystical component of the pagan understanding of death and fear of the otherworldly light.

Observance of such rituals was necessary so that the dead did not come from the other world and did not take his loved ones with him. The Christian meaning lies in the need for cleansing before God, not only mental, but also bodily. Modern washing in the morgue has a purely sanitary and hygienic content.

The garment of the deceased

Now it is traditional to dress a deceased man in a dark suit and a white shirt, women in light-colored clothes. However, in the era of Ancient Rus and in the Middle Ages, everyone was buried in white. This tradition combined both Christian ideas about the purity of the soul and the traditional white robes adopted in Russia.

Traditionally, the deceased is dressed in white

For burial, the best clothes of the deceased are chosen; special funeral kits or new costumes and dresses are often purchased, which also symbolizes the purity of a person before God. The feet are shod in white slippers without solid soles - the familiar symbol of funeral supplies. It is prohibited to use clothes of relatives or other people. The head of women is covered with a headscarf, which is combined with Christian and cultural traditions, a wreath with a prayer is put on a man.

Separate traditions are observed in relation to deceased young girls and guys who did not manage to get married.

The death of a young man is always an exceptional event. A premature death in the most active age causes particular regret and sadness. Unmarried girls, both in the old days and now, are buried in white, and often in wedding dresses, a veil is placed in a coffin. The bride's funeral can be accompanied by some wedding customs - drinking champagne, singing wedding songs.

Dead young people who did not manage to get married are put on wedding rings on the ring finger of their right hand. The dressing of young people takes place as in preparation for a wedding ceremony. Similar traditions exist not only in the Orthodox world.

The position in the coffin

After washing and vesting, the deceased is placed on a bench facing the icons, with straw or something soft on it. Silence should be observed in the house, telephones, audio and video equipment should be turned off. Mirrors, glass surfaces other than windows (cabinet doors and sideboards, interior doors, etc.) should be covered with white paper or cloth, photographs and paintings taken or hung.

The coffin (the outdated name for domina - from the word "house") is considered as the last earthly refuge of man. This element is given a lot of attention in the funeral procedure.

In ancient times, coffins could be made whole from a tree trunk. In its usual form, this ritual object is made of boards, modern materials (chipboard, plastic, etc.), metals can only be used for decoration and decoration (with the exception of zinc coffins in certain cases). For the manufacture can be used any type of wood except aspen. The inside of the coffin is covered with soft material. Expensive coffins can be polished, finished with precious materials and upholstered with a soft finish. The body is placed on a white blanket - sheet or cloth. A small pillow is placed under the head. The prepared coffin can be regarded as an imitation of a bed; Sometimes women during their lifetime prepare a pillow for themselves in a coffin, stuffed with their own hair.

The coffin in the Christian tradition is an imitation of a bed.

The baptized are buried with a pectoral cross. A small icon is placed in the coffin, a crown on the forehead and a "handwriting" - a written or printed prayer that forgives sins. It is put into the right hand of the deceased, A candle is placed on the chest in crossed arms. The deceased may be given things that he constantly used or especially valued during his lifetime. It has become common to bury with cell phones.

Earlier, mittens were put on to transfer the body to the coffin, the house was constantly fumigated with incense. Before taking out the coffin, you must not throw garbage out of the house - this custom is observed in our time.

Seeing the deceased

Seeing off the deceased is also a symbiosis of Orthodox rituals, mystical beliefs and traditions and takes place in several stages. Nowadays, modern traditions are closely intertwined with the well-established old customs, which include:

• the installation of a portrait and awards of the deceased at the coffin, their demonstration in the funeral procession;
• farewell speeches;
• placement of photographs on grave monuments and crosses;
• funeral music, singing, fireworks;
• condolences through the media, etc.

Farewell to the departed

The coffin is installed in the room on a table covered with cloth, or on stools with feet towards the door. The cover is located vertically with a narrow part to the floor in the corridor, often on the landing. For 3 days, the coffin with the body of the deceased must remain in the house.

Relatives, friends, acquaintances and neighbors come to visit the deceased. The doors won't close. At night, relatives and loved ones should gather around the coffin - to say goodbye to the deceased, to remember his worldly life, the events in which the deceased was a participant.

Previously, without fail, relatives or specially invited persons (not necessarily priests) read the psalter over the coffin. Now the observance of this tradition is at the discretion of the next of kin. Above the deceased one should read the canon "Following the departure of the soul from the body."

If there are images in the house, it is necessary to put in front of them a glass of water, covered with a piece of bread. Water and bread can be placed on the windowsill. It is believed that the soul of the deceased does not immediately leave the earth. The food and drink on display can reflect both a pagan sacrifice to the spirit of the deceased, and Christian ideas about the stay of the soul on earth after death for 40 days - a vivid example of the intertwining of pagan and Christian rituals. At the head of the coffin, a candle is lit on a table or other elevation; an icon lamp should be lit in front of the images. Candles can be installed in the corners of the house.

A portrait with a black ribbon is placed at the head of the coffin, awards are placed on a pillow at the feet. Wreaths are lined up along the walls of the room, a wreath from relatives is placed at the feet between the coffin and the pillow with awards. People who come to say goodbye usually do not take off their shoes. It is required to stand or sit near the coffin for a while, for a long time or throughout the night, only relatives gather at the deceased. Chairs or benches should be installed along the coffin in the room with the deceased. Farewell is carried out until the moment the body is taken out.

Currently, the tradition of a three-day farewell is not observed in megacities and large cities, but in small urban settlements and rural areas it has been preserved everywhere.

Compliance with the three-day farewell is at the discretion of the relatives and depends on the actual circumstances in which the burial takes place.

Often, the body for burial is taken from the morgue already prepared, the procession immediately goes to the church or to the cemetery. The priests do not insist on the exact observance of all this does not affect.

Body removal and funeral procession

The removal of the body is prescribed no earlier than 12-13 hours and so that the burial takes place before sunset. Usually, they try to carry out the take-out before 14:00. The dead man is carried out with his feet forward, without touching the threshold and door frames, which should protect against the return of the dead. There is another special protective rite - replacing the place of the deceased. It is necessary to sit for some time on the table or stools on which the coffin was located, and then turn them upside down for a day.

Removal of the body begins at 12 - 13 o'clock

Before leaving, those who have come to say goodbye and take off on their last journey line up along the path of the procession. Initially, wreaths, a portrait of the deceased, a pillow with orders and medals, and a coffin lid are taken out of the house. After 10 - 15 minutes, the coffin is taken out and carried to the hearse, relatives come out behind the coffin. In front of the hearse, the coffin is placed on stools for several minutes and left open to give an opportunity to say goodbye to those people who have not been at home and do not go to the funeral service and the cemetery.

In a car hearse, the coffin is placed on a special pedestal with the headboard forward, wreaths are laid.

A specific custom when taking out is mourning for the deceased, and it is often not relatives or close people who mourn. Lamentations over the coffin and tears, according to tradition, should characterize the personality of the deceased. The better the relationship with others and the respect from society, the more crying. In the old days, there were special mourners who were specially invited to the ceremony. Folklore also preserved funeral laments - lament songs, which were sung in a harsh howling voice.

The funeral procession from the door of the house to the hearse is lined up in the following order:

• orchestra;
• master of ceremonies;
• a man carrying a portrait;
• people carrying pads with the deceased's awards;
• people with wreaths;
• people carrying the lid of the coffin;
• carrying the coffin;
• close relatives;
• others say goodbye.

There was an interesting ritual of the first meeting, personifying the unity of earthly and unearthly life. The ceremony consisted in the fact that the first person met by the procession was given bread, which he wrapped in a towel. The gifted one had to pray for the peace of the soul of the deceased. It was assumed that the deceased should be the first to meet in the other world a person who was presented with bread. On the way, the procession with the coffin scattered grain for the birds. The presence of birds was considered a good sign, sometimes they were identified with the souls of the dead.

The funeral procession, according to church canons, could stop only in the church and near the cemetery. Often, the movement slowed down or stopped when passing any memorable or significant places and objects for the deceased: near the house of a recently deceased neighbor or relative, at crossroads, at crosses, etc. As they passed such places, some of the people seeing off could be eliminated.

This custom is to some extent combined with the traditions associated with the 40-day stay of the soul of the deceased on earth. During this period, the soul visits the most significant places for a person in earthly life.

The coffin is not allowed to be carried by the next of kin. Most often, porters are either specially invited people, or friends, colleagues and distant relatives. The rite of wearing a coffin is very different from the one that existed earlier. What remains in common is that the further the coffin is carried in the arms, the more respected the position of the deceased. Along the way, the coffin is scattered with fresh flowers - carnations for the deceased man and roses for women and girls.

Funeral service

The deceased has a funeral service on the 3rd day after death, except for the days of Holy Easter and the Nativity of Christ. The ceremony is carried out only once, in contrast to the funeral services, which can be served both before burial and after repeatedly. Only baptized people are allowed to sing the funeral. Those who have renounced the faith or excommunicated from the church and suicides cannot be rebuilt. In very exceptional cases, the latter can be served with the blessing of the bishop.

Suicides are not given a funeral service in church

To perform the ceremony, the coffin with the deceased is brought into the church and placed with its head towards the altar. Those gathered are nearby, holding burning church candles in their hands. The priest proclaims Eternal memory and reads a prayer of absolution, with which the unfulfilled oaths lying on the deceased and the sins he committed during his lifetime are released. The prayer of permission does not forgive sins for which the deceased did not consciously want to repent; only those who were recognized at confession or which the deceased did not report due to ignorance or forgetfulness can be forgiven.

A leaf with the words of a prayer is put into the hands of the deceased.

At the end of the prayer, those gathered extinguish the candles and walk around the coffin with the body, kiss the crown on the forehead and the icon on the chest, and ask forgiveness from the deceased. After the end of the farewell, the body is covered with a shroud. The coffin is closed with a lid, after the funeral service it can no longer be opened. With the singing of the Trisagion, the deceased is carried out of the temple, the procession moves to the burial place. There is a procedure if there is no way to bring the deceased to the temple or invite a priest home.

Burial

The burial should be completed before sunset. By the time the body is delivered to the burial site, the grave must be ready. If the burial is carried out without a funeral service, the coffin is closed at the dug grave, having previously given the opportunity for those who have gathered to finally say goodbye to the deceased. The last speeches are made over the open coffin, the merits and good deeds of the deceased are remembered. The coffin is lowered into the grave on long towels. Those gathered take turns throwing a handful of earth on the lid of the coffin, the first to pass are the relatives. You can briefly pray to yourself with the words: Rest, Lord, the soul of your newly departed servant (name), and forgive him all his voluntary and involuntary sins and grant him the Kingdom of Heaven. This prayer is also performed at a memorial dinner before a new dish.

It can be accompanied by a number of customs and ritual actions:

1. Together with the coffin, church candles that burned in the temple during the funeral service are lowered into the grave.
2. Small coins are thrown into the grave. This custom is interpreted as the ransom for the deceased of a place in the cemetery from the "owner" of the underworld or a place in the next world, payment for passage to another world.
3. After burial, a tear scarf is left on the grave.

These customs have pagan roots, but do not contradict the Orthodox canons.

A temporary Orthodox cross or obelisk, another sign with a photograph of the deceased, the name and dates of life, is erected on the grave mound. A permanent monument can be installed no earlier than the next year after the burial. The grave is usually buried by the workers of the cemetery - the diggers. After the burial, the custom prescribes to treat the workers with traditional memorial dishes and vodka for the peace of the soul. Leftover food is scattered over the grave to attract birds.

The funeral of servicemen, participants in the war and hostilities, and law enforcement officers is accompanied by a small arms fireworks.

In the old days there was an interesting ritual - secret alms. For 40 days after the burial, relatives secretly laid alms - bread, eggs, pancakes, pieces of canvas, etc. on the windows and on the porch to the poor neighbors. The gifted were supposed to pray for the deceased, while it was believed that they take some of their sins to themselves. The habits of handing out tears, pies, sweets are also connected with the distribution of alms. in some places new wooden spoons were distributed so that the deceased was remembered every time they ate. Wealthy relatives could make large donations for a new bell (it was believed that a bell could free a sinful soul from hell). There was a custom to give a neighbor a rooster so that he sang for the sins of the deceased.

Remembrance

The funeral ends with a memorial dinner, to which everyone is invited. The commemoration serves not only as a reminder of the deceased, but also personifies the continuation of life. The memorial meal has certain peculiarities in the choice and sequence of dishes. The basis, the head of nutrition in Russian traditions, was bread, flour products. The commemoration begins and ends with pancakes or pancakes with honey, kutya. Kutia, depending on local characteristics, is prepared from wheat grains boiled in honey, rice with sugar and raisins.

For the first meal, meat cabbage soup or soup is mandatory. For the second, they cook porridge (barley, millet) or potatoes with meat. Fish, jelly can be served as separate snacks. On fast days, meat is replaced with fish and mushrooms. A sweet third must be served. In accordance with old traditions, the third should be oatmeal jelly, but now it is being replaced with compote. Fried fish, jelly can serve as separate snacks. At the commemoration, they are treated to vodka; women can be offered wine.

An obligatory attribute is pies with meat, cabbage, sweets. Pies are distributed to those present so that they can treat them to their home.

The commemoration is held on the 9th and 40th days. Day 9 means an appeal to the 9 angelic ranks, who act as those who ask God for mercy and mercy on a sinful soul. From the 9th day after the funeral to the 40th day, the soul is doomed to wander through the ordeals, representing a visit to various places where sins were committed. Angels must help the soul overcome sinful obstacles on the way to another world. The Creator does not initially determine the soul either to hell or to heaven. For 40 days, the deceased atone for his sins, an assessment of the deeds of good and evil is carried out. The commemoration is held in the form of a memorial meal. At the time of the commemoration, the house is cleaned in the same way as during the farewell to the deceased within 3 days after death.

Day 40 is the last day of the soul's presence in this world. On this day, the Supreme Court is held, the soul temporarily returns to its former home and remains there until the farewell - commemoration. If the wires are not arranged, the deceased will suffer. On the 40th day, the further extraterrestrial life of a person is determined. There is a custom to hang a towel in the corner of the house for 40 days. The soul, returning home after ordeals, wipes itself off with a towel and rests.

Sweet pies are a must on the memorial table

Prayer is able to alleviate the lot of a sinful soul in extraterrestrial life, therefore, the relatives of the deceased order a funeral service (mass) in the church with the commemoration of the deceased for 6 weeks after death - magpie. Instead of mass, you can order the reading of the magpie to the reader, who reads the canon for 40 days in the house of the deceased. The names of the dead are recorded in the annual commemoration - synodik.

Mourning for the head of the family is observed for a longer time than for the elderly. Outwardly, mourning is expressed in the wearing of dark clothes.

Women wear a black headscarf for 40 days after the funeral. During the period of mourning, they often visit the deceased at the cemetery, go to church, refuse entertainment and celebrations. Longer periods of mourning characterize the severity of the loss. Mothers of dead children and young widows observe mourning for up to a year or more. For deceased elderly parents, a spouse in old age may be reduced to 6 weeks of mourning. Men adhere to the mourning uniform to participate in funeral rites; on other days, mourning is not externally expressed.

The main feature of the funeral rite in Orthodoxy is the perception by the Church of the body of a deceased person as a temple of his soul; at the same time, the earthly life of a person is considered antecedent future - eternal; death in Orthodox philosophy is seen as the moment of awakening from the sleep of a sinful life, after which comes the time of renewal. Death is an inevitable act of being, followed by the separation of the soul from the body and its presentation to the Highest Court.

A Christian tries to build his whole life so that there are no unrepentant sins left behind, so as not to suffer from them in the afterlife. Therefore, one of the most difficult philosophical questions is how to properly prepare a person for death. If a person is seriously ill, it is necessary to call a priest to whom you can confess, as well as take the sacrament and unction. When a person feels the approach of death, he is seized by fear and a painful expectation of the unknown. To relieve the suffering soul, those close to the dying person can themselves read out a prayer service.

In the Orthodox prayer book, it is called "The canon of prayer to our Lord Jesus Christ and the Most Pure Theotokos at the separation of the soul from the body of every orthodox". At the end of the Canon there is a prayer from a priest for the exodus of the soul, its liberation, forgiveness of sins and eternal rest in the Kingdom of Heaven. This prayer can only be read by a priest, therefore, relatives and other close ones who are not ministers of the church can only read the Canon.

The funeral rites performed by the Orthodox Church are not colorful and pompous celebrations that are needed only to satisfy ambition. These are deeply spiritual sacraments based on sacred revelations that existed even before the first companions of Jesus Christ.

The essence of the Orthodox tradition of burial- a consoling act expressing faith in the Resurrection and eternal life. Throughout the history of mankind, not a single people left the body of the deceased unburied. It has always been a sacred ordinance. The Orthodox burial ceremony keeps a deep meaning - consolation and faith in the beginning of a new life after death.

The first day after death

Immediately after the death of a person, his body is subject to washing. This ceremony marks the cleansing of the body and soul, which will have to appear before God at the High Court. After ablution, a deceased person is put on clean clothes, symbolizing new life.

If during his lifetime an Orthodox person did not wear a pectoral cross, then it should be worn for burial. After this, the deceased is placed in a coffin, which is a symbolic ark for waiting in it for the beginning of a new life. The coffin is sprinkled with holy water on all sides. The head and shoulders should be resting on a pillow. The arms are folded in such a way that the right one is always on top. There should be a candle in the left hand of the deceased, and an icon on his chest; if a woman is buried, then this is an icon of the Mother of God, if a man is an image of the Savior.

All this testifies to the deceased's commitment to Christianity and also to the fact that after death this person gives up his soul to Christ, in whose salvation he believes and goes to meet the Creator. A paper crown is placed on the forehead of the deceased, which, in turn, symbolizes victory in the field of sin. This suggests that the struggle with earthly passions and sin is over, and that reward awaits ahead in the Kingdom of Heaven. On the crown, along with the image of Jesus Christ, the Mother of God and John the Baptist, a prayer is written - the Blessed Song: "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us." Every Orthodox person is entitled to his own crown after death.

The body of the deceased is covered with a white shroud - this indicates that the deceased belongs to the Orthodox faith and that the Church from that moment will take care of the soul of a Christian. According to the Orthodox tradition, the coffin is placed in the center of the room in front of the home icons. A candle or a lamp is lit in the room, which does not need to be extinguished until the body of the deceased is taken out. Lighted candles are also placed around the coffin in the form of a kind of cross - at the head, at the feet and on the sides of the deceased, which marks the transition to eternal life.

Second day

It is important to organize the burial in such a way that care for the soul of the deceased is in the foreground. However, you should not resort to superstitions: put the personal belongings of a deceased person or money in a coffin. According to Christian rules, it is customary to put only flowers in the coffin - their fragrance brings glory to God. Also, flowers carry the symbolism of the Garden of Eden, are considered an adornment of the throne of the Lord.

After the laying of flowers, the reading of the Psalter by the priest begins. The Psalms about the departed are consolation for those who grieve and turn to prayers for mercy on the soul. The Psalter is divided into twenty parts, which are called kathismas.

Each kathisma begins with the words "Come, let us worship our Tsar God ...". Kathisma, in turn, consists of three "Glories". At the end of each "Glory", "Alleluia ..." is read three times. The reading ends with a prayer dedicated to the deceased, indicating his name: "Remember, O Lord our God ...".

Before the immediate burial takes place, the Psalter must be read without interruption. It is believed that at the very time when a person's body is in a coffin, his soul goes through terrible trials on the way to a new life. Memorial services are designed to alleviate these torments. Memorial litias are also served - they are shorter than memorial services, their other name is folk prayers. During the services, all those present light candles, which express the memory of the deceased and prayer for his soul. The priest performs the service with a censer.

While conducting a panikhida, the Orthodox Church cares first of all about the soul of the deceased, which, appearing at the Judgment of God, needs support and prayer.

Day three

On the third day after death, a funeral service and direct burial of the deceased... The countdown is carried out from the very first day - that is, from the moment when death occurred. For example, if a person died on Monday, the burial occurs on Wednesday. You can also perform funeral services at home, but best of all in a church. Before transferring the body to the temple, a funeral lithium is served at home, walking around the deceased with a censer for fragrance and purification of the spirit. The process of the funeral service itself takes place not so much in mourning as in solemn form. Although the relatives of the deceased are usually dressed in mourning, the priest wears light-colored clothing.

Those present at the service are holding lighted candles in their hands. According to the rules, the funeral service can only take place once, even in cases of reburial. A kutia with a candle (a traditional lenten or mourning dish made from wheat and rice, seasoned with sugar or honey) is placed on a table near the coffin. Kutya grains symbolize the birth of a new life after death. So, like grains that are placed in the ground in order to bloom later, a person's body must be buried in order to then be resurrected in spirit. Sugar and honey herald the sweetness of heaven. For the Orthodox, kutia itself is the embodiment of the body of the Lord - Jesus Christ, who died in the flesh, but was resurrected in spirit. Likewise, we, according to the Gospel, will not die, but will live in the resurrection.

According to Christian rules, the coffin must remain open until the end of the funeral service.

An exception to the funeral service for the departed is the holidays of Easter and the Nativity of Christ. In such cases, the dead can be buried earlier or later than the third day, but this rarely happens. This happened during the Great Patriotic War, when relatives, who received notifications of death after the fact, performed the funeral service for the dead on unspecified days.

According to Christian canons, only suicides who have deliberately committed an act are prohibited from burial service. In rare cases, it is possible to perform a funeral service for a person who committed suicide in an unconscious state, but for this it is necessary to apply in writing to the chief bishop, and also to attach to the petition a document on the cause of death - for example, mental illness. The funeral service consists of several parts. The name "funeral service" refers to the singing nature of the sacrament. The content of the funeral service is a story about the fate of a person, starting with the first fall of Adam and Eve, after which each person became mortal, but after the coming of Christ, he had the opportunity to gain eternal life, but no longer on earth, but in Heaven.

The church in her prayer asks God for the mercy of the forgiveness of the sins of the deceased and that he be accepted into the Kingdom of God. At the end of the funeral service, the priest reads a prayer for the liberation of the soul from previous earthly sins and their forgiveness. The text with this prayer is put into the right hand of the deceased, and is also given to his family and friends. The custom of enclosing notes came to us since the 11th century after the story with the Varangian prince Simon, who voluntarily accepted the Orthodox faith and asked for a suicide note with a permit. Also known is the case when the deceased Alexander Nevsky, during the funeral service, he stretched out his hand to accept the note.

At the end of the permissive prayer, the stichera is read: "Come, we will give the last kiss ...". Further, there is a farewell to the deceased and his kiss. This action is a confirmation of the unity of all Christians. The relatives of the deceased walk around the coffin, ask to let go of past grievances and put their lips first to the icon on the chest of the deceased, then to the crown on the forehead. If the coffin is closed for some reason, then they kiss the image of the cross on the lid of the coffin or the hand of a priest. After the funeral service, the body is transferred to the cemetery while the Trisagion Song is being performed. As a rule, the priest accompanies the coffin with the body to the grave, but if this does not happen, the body is buried near the place of the funeral service. The priest sprinkles earth on the covered body of the deceased in a cross-like manner, saying "The Lord's earth and the fulfillment of its universe and all who live on it." When performing unction (anointing with oil), the body is also sprayed with oil in the form of a cross. It is possible to sprinkle earth with relatives in the event that before that, at the request of relatives, the priest poured earth on paper, after which the earth in a paper roll was delivered to the cemetery. The same can be done during the funeral service in absentia. After sprinkling with earth, the coffin is closed and nailed down.

If a baptized baby is deceased, then he is buried as an immaculate. Here there is no talk of forgiveness of sins, the Church only prays for the ascension of the soul into the Kingdom of Heaven. Baptized babies are considered cleansed from original sin, but unbaptized babies are not, therefore, a funeral service is not performed over us.

It is believed that such children are not sinful, but they are not clean either. Babies are considered children under seven years old, after seven years the funeral service takes place according to the rules of adults. Nowadays cremation of the dead is quite widespread. It was legalized back in 1909 in Russia. A special bill was issued, according to which both the burial of the deceased in cemeteries and the burning of bodies in crematoria specially arranged for this were allowed, if there was a written will of the deceased. However, the attitude of the Orthodox Church towards cremation remains aloof, since Scripture speaks of burying the body in the ground, while there is no talk of burning it. According to Christian traditions, at burial, the body of the deceased is turned to face the East - that is, in the direction where the dawn comes, as a sign of the victory of darkness over light, the transition from earthly life to eternal.

When the coffin is lowered into the grave, the Trisagion Song is performed, as if accompanying the transition of a person to a new life. An eight-pointed cross is installed over the grave - a symbol of salvation in Orthodoxy. The cross "accompanied" Khristinin all earthly life, and will also keep him in rest. A temporary wooden cross is usually placed before the monument is erected. Although it can be made from any other material, the main thing is that it has the correct eight-pointed shape. A cross is installed at the feet of the deceased, the crucifix is ​​turned to the face.

As a rule, a cross is carved on the monument. This is an eternal sign of the immortality and resurrection of the soul, which awaits every righteous Christian after death.

What superstitions are there and what NOT to do at Christian funerals

From ancient times ritual ceremonies were surrounded by mystical superstitions and omens. It is believed that superstitions have survived from primitive times, when rituals represented an attempt by a person to appease the world in which he lived. Many funeral will and superstition associated with death and burial. Each place has its own burial traditions... Superstition, adherence to all kinds of signs and customs, observance of various forms funeral rites are explained by a lack of knowledge about them. Having accepted Orthodoxy, we have not completely outlived pagan customs. They are most clearly manifested precisely in burial ceremony, the secrets and many fears of which no one was able to recognize
Let's name some funeral customs and superstition which Orthodox Christians should not take into account:

• put money, things and food in the coffin; even if, for some reason, extra burial items were bought;
• put a pancake on the face of the deceased, and then eat it, believing that this will destroy the sins of the deceased;
• consider that the closest relatives of the deceased should not participate in the transfer of the coffin, so as not to entail a series of deaths in the family.
• to believe that a person who accidentally stood between the tomb and the altar during the funeral will certainly die soon;
• to believe that a person who returns to the house after taking out the body and before returning from the cemetery will certainly die;
• to believe that the person walking in front of the coffin will follow the deceased;
• consider that you cannot look out of the window at the funeral procession, otherwise you will die;
• consider that giving tables and chairs for the commemoration will bring death to your house;
• to put a glass of vodka and bread “for the deceased” at the commemoration and keep this “memorial glass” until the fortieth day;
• pouring vodka into the grave mound;
• say: "May the earth rest in peace to you"; A instead of this, pray briefly: "Lord, rest the soul of your newly departed servant (name), and forgive him all his sins, voluntary and involuntary, and grant him the Kingdom of Heaven."

• to believe that the soul of the deceased can take the form of a bird or a bee;
• to believe that if the deceased is not obeyed, then his soul remains on earth as a ghost;
• to believe that the burial ground, which is given at the correspondence funeral service, cannot be kept at home for more than one day;
• to believe that if a person is buried without an arm or a leg, then in that world he will remain a cripple. This pagan prejudice served as the basis for the delusion of some Christians who feared that on the Day of Judgment their loved one would rise from the dead without finiteness and remain disabled for eternity;
• believe that cremation can cause illnesses for the children or grandchildren of the person being cremated;
• to believe that the bodies of those burnt in the fire will not be resurrected on the Day of Judgment. Among Christians, there is a fear that burning will inevitably doom the deceased to hellish torments (parallels are drawn between the fire of the crematorium and the hellish fire).

I must say that various prejudices associated with burial, - a problem not only of our time. And in pre-revolutionary times of all kinds superstition associated with death and burial rite, it was enough. For example, there is a non-Orthodox pagan custom, when an ax is placed under the coffin of the deceased, coins are thrown into the coffin, into the grave.

Mourning for the deceased is also not a church tradition. There are many more signs and superstitions. There are many unwritten and sometimes strange rituals, which, nevertheless, are passed down from generation to generation and are performed with almost greater zeal than church prayer rites... Here are some funeral customs:

• close the windows and vents in the room where the deceased is. Keep the front door or the door to the room with the deceased closed;
• cover mirrors with a cloth. Mirrors are closed so that the soul of the deceased, seeing itself, is not frightened. Another interpretation: so that the deceased does not frighten the relatives. It is also believed that through the mirror the soul can go into the dark world of "looking glass", where the devil reigns and demons rule. In fact, this custom originated from ancient times, when in rich houses mirrors and crystal chandeliers were draped with black fabrics, so that their brilliance would not distract those praying from the funeral prayer;
• at the time of the funeral, remove animals (dogs, cats) from the apartment, especially dogs. It is believed that the howling or barking of a dog frightens the soul of the deceased. It is considered a bad omen when the cat jumps into the coffin with the deceased;
• after taking the deceased out of the house, be sure to wash the floors. Thus, death is washed out of the house. Or, when the deceased is carried out, tables and chairs are turned over in the house. That is unnecessary. All this is associated with pagan customs;
• stop twice on the way from home to the cemetery. This is due to the religious charter, according to which it is necessary to serve a litiya twice: when leaving the village and when entering the cemetery. The church custom has been forgotten, but the fact that the coffin with the deceased must be placed in two places is remembered;
• do not bring natural or artificial flowers from the cemetery. It is believed that the one who does this will be sick for a long time and hard;
• do not try on clothes for the deceased when buying them. It is believed that a person, even without knowing who the clothes are bought for, tries on his death;
• put glasses or a prosthesis that belonged to the deceased in the coffin. Modern funeral custom, in no way connected with the rules of Christian burial;
• take nothing from the cemetery, no matter how valuable and beautiful, this thing would not be, so as not to take on other people's troubles and illnesses;
• in order not to bring a new death into the house, more than one candle should not be lit on the memorial table;
• if someone laughs or sings at the commemoration, he will soon howl with grief. This funeral custom is understandable - disrespect for grief must be punished;
• those who drink heavily at the commemoration will have their children drunk.

In the XX century, these funerary superstitions became ubiquitous. They are performed without thinking about the meaning, even by people who consider themselves atheists. We must grieve when, dying, those whom we love leave us. We will mourn our dead, because a loved one has left us, but we will mourn him in a Christian way.

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Cremation

The Orthodox Church allows cremation only under circumstances of force majeure – lack of places in cemeteries or extreme scarcity of funds for burial. All funeral prayers, including the funeral service, are performed over the cremated person without changes. Before burning the body, the icon or crucifix must be removed from the coffin., and leave the whisk and leaf with a prayer of permission.

Among Christians, there is a fear that burning will inevitably doom the deceased to hellish torments (parallels are drawn between the fire of the crematorium and the hellish fire). On this score, back in the second century, the apologist of Christianity Minucius Felix said: "We are not afraid ... of any damage in any method of burial, but we adhere to the old and better custom of burying the body." In the book of the monk Mitrofan "How our dead live and how we will live and we after death" we read: “In whatever way our body is destroyed, its elements are not destroyed; and it is possible for the omnipotence of God to resurrect the body from the existing elements, whether it be burned or eaten by beasts. The elements, having heard the voice of the Creator, will gather to fulfill their purpose to make up the human body; will gather in exactly the same way as the fish heard the voice of the Son of God and immediately gathered in the net, which were lowered into the sea by the holy apostles at the command of Jesus Christ. This is a great mystery. "
It should be noted that cremation, from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, is not an edifying action; it instills in the soul, rather, despair than hope of resurrection. The posthumous fate of each deceased is in the hands of God and does not depend on the method of burial. There is no need to put cutlery in honor of the deceased, or even worse - put vodka in a glass in front of the portrait.

The newly departed needs prayers, good deeds and thoughts for his sake.

V. Perov. The return of the peasants from the funeral in winter

Very often, the lack of understanding of the meaning of Orthodox rituals and traditions leads to the fact that people, instead of helping the soul of a deceased loved one, begin to believe in all sorts of superstitions and observe customs that have nothing to do with Christianity. In this article, we will tell you about how to bury a person in accordance with Orthodox traditions.

After the baptism of Rus and the adoption of Orthodoxy, the funeral rite changed. In some places in Russian villages (especially in the north) the custom arose to make a coffin for oneself, just as some saints did.

In a Russian peasant family, the deceased was washed under any circumstances, changed into clean, sometimes very expensive clothes. They put the deceased on a bench, with their heads in the red corner (there were icons in the red corner), covered them with a white canvas (shroud), folded their hands on their chest, giving them a white handkerchief in the right corner. The funeral took place on the third day, especially the revered dead were carried in their arms to the cemetery. All this was accompanied by crying and lamentations ...

The death of a deep old man was not considered a grief; in this case, lamentation and lamentation were rather formal. The hired cry could instantly transform, interrupt the cry with some ordinary remark and scream again. Another thing is when close relatives are lamenting or when death happened prematurely. Here the traditional form took on a personal, emotional, sometimes deeply tragic color.

After the baptism of Russia, the dead were buried with their heads to the west. The general Christian rule to lay the dead with their heads to the west is directly related to the tradition that the body of Christ was buried with the head to the west and, therefore, facing to the east. One spiritual work of the XIV century says about this as follows: “Everyone should be buried so that his head was turned to the west, and his feet were directed to the east. At the same time, he prays by his very position and expresses that he is ready to hurry from west to east, from sunset to sunrise, from the world to eternity. "
The funeral always ended with a commemoration, or funeral service, for which special memorial meals were prepared. Even at the cemetery, the deceased was commemorated with kutya - steeply boiled rice, to which raisins were added. Pancakes are among the obligatory meals at Russian commemorations.
All the nights after death and before the funeral, a specially hired reader read the Psalter and prayers for the dead. Local old men and women were awake with her in the room where the deceased was. After the funeral, the reader was presented with a towel on which the Psalter lay. After the funeral, it was customary to celebrate the ninth and fortieth days (fortieth) after death.

The Slavs had a ritual of special burial clothes. The East Slavic peoples had a custom to bury in the same clothes in which a person was married, and if a young unmarried girl or a single guy died, then the deceased was dressed up as for a wedding. In Ukraine, a girl was placed in a coffin with her hair loose, with a gilded periwinkle wreath on her head, the coffin was decorated with flowers, and two wedding candles were set. Among the Hutsuls, one wreath was put on the head, and another, larger, made of periwinkle, cornflowers, carnations, was placed around the body.

The girlfriends (boyfriends) imitated the wedding ceremony - they chose the elders, matchmaker, boyars. The headman and the old man were tied up with towels, the matchmaker was given a candle and a sword. Girlfriends tied their heads with black ribbons. One young man was chosen for the role of "widower". A wax ring was put on the girl's finger, after it had been gilded. On the day of the funeral, a wedding loaf was baked, put on the lid of the coffin, and handed out to relatives at the cemetery.

The deceased child among the Eastern Slavs, as a rule, was girded. This custom is associated with a naive religious idea that God will give apples to children at the Spas, and that the child needs to be able to hide the apple in his bosom.

In the history of Slavic burial rituals, archeology identifies a number of critical stages caused by major changes in a person's awareness of the world around him, in his views on the fate of the deceased. The early form of burials of the ancient Slavs - the burial of a corpse in a crooked form, that is, the position of the embryo - is associated with the idea of ​​reincarnation, the reincarnation of the deceased, his second birth on earth, the transition of his life force (soul) into one of the living beings
At the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages, a method of burying the dead already appeared in a straightened form, and then cremation - the burning of a corpse on a funeral pyre. This ritual was also associated with the idea of ​​the indestructibility of the life vulture. New was the idea of ​​the abode of invisible souls - the sky, where the souls fell with the smoke of the funeral pyre. Both forms of the funeral rite constantly coexisted, although at different times and in different proportions. The ashes of the burnt deceased were also buried in the ground, placing them in urns-pots or simply in pits. Initially, over each grave, a grave structure was built in the form of a dwelling house - domina, "stolyt".
It is from here that the custom, still found in some places, originates (in particular, among the Old Believers) to make a pommel over the grave cross, similar to a gable roof. It has not only a utilitarian purpose to protect the cross from rain and snow, but is also a symbol of the Russian hut - the house for the deceased.
The cemetery of several hundred domina among the ancient Slavs was a "city of the dead", a place of worship for the ancestors of the clan. The cult of ancestors bifurcated: some magical actions were associated with ideas about invisible and intangible ancestors hovering in heavenly space, others were tied to a cemetery, a burial place for ashes, the only place on earth that was really associated with the deceased.

According to the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, the purpose of the funeral rite is to make it easier for the soul of the deceased to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, drive away "unclean spirits" from him, and forgive his sins before God. However, the Christian interpretation of death as a blessing, a messenger of peace and joy has always been opposed by the popular idea of ​​it as a hostile force, a fatal inevitable evil. The deep psychological roots of understanding death as a tragedy are due to the tragedy of the event itself - the irreparable loss of a loved one, leaving him into oblivion. The phenomenon of death at all times shook the feelings and imaginations of people, forced once again to turn to the question of the chain and meaning of life, the purpose of man on earth, the moral duty to the dead and the living.
The question of the causes of death is the most important question that rivets the unflagging interest of people. A person is characterized by the desire to know his destiny, to slightly open the veil of the future.
The theme of death is embodied in a whole cycle of folk signs, fortune-telling, predictions, and fatal signs. Their focus is to find out the causes and essence of death, to free oneself from fear of it, to determine the fate of a person in order to prepare for it, to intensify their actions in the fight against it. All signs are an attempt to understand and explain the cause-and-effect relationships of the surrounding world, to predict the future.
Negative omens and fortune-telling, that is, those that foreshadowed death, trouble, impending misfortune, accompanied a person's entire life in the past: birth, maturity, marriage, the appearance of children in the family, illness, death, the funeral of the dead. Their object was, first of all, the person himself, his state of health, personal life, home, everyday life, natural environment. The main theme of these signs is the definition of vitality, longevity, happy or unsuccessful fate of a person.
So, at the birth of a child, they already wondered whether the baby would survive after birth, whether it would live at all. The signs of the wedding and wedding cycle measured out for the newlyweds the segment of their life that they would live after the wedding, they made a guess about which of the young would live longer, who would die earlier; signs during illness - whether the patient will recover or not. A special group of signs is associated with the patient's condition before death and the funeral itself. The onset of the hour of death was recognized by a number of common signs: the smell of the patient's body ("smells like earth"), the appearance of dark spots on it, the change in the color of the metal cross that was dropped on the water that the patient drank, etc. Signs either predicted death, or were aimed at preventing it: if two people died in a house in a short time, then you need to wait for a new death; if someone dies with open eyes, then "looks out" for the next victim. In fortune-telling and omens, some objects (a knife, a needle, a pin, as well as a belt, a broom and some others) acquired the functions of a magical symbol of death, which, apparently, is explained by the possibility of using it as a deadly weapon or symbolically sweeping a person out of the house. "If you find a needle, a pin, and in general, do not pick up anything sharp - misfortune will befall."
The interpretation of "prophetic dreams" was widespread, some of which meant death in the house; loss of a tooth, especially with blood, meant the death of a blood relative (by analogy, a number of teeth are a family, one tooth is a member of a related group); to see eggs in a dream - to the deceased.
The theme of personal life and fate in fortune-telling about death is inextricably linked with the theme of the life of the surrounding nature, flora and fauna. In the predictions of death, the traditional symbolism of the ancient animal epic, bearing echoes of totemic beliefs, was widely used. These are images of animals and birds - or wonderful helpers of man, or prophets of misfortune. The symbols of death are always birds of prey, the harbingers of death: a raven, a hawk, an eagle owl, an owl, which have sinister powers. They arrive and sit on the house, as if anticipating their prey - carrion: "The raven croaks - to the dead man."
And today the main symbol of death is still embodied in the bird: it is a sparrow, hen, chicken, etc. The bird knocks on the window, sits on the shoulder of a person, flies into the house - all these are signs of impending death. Fortune-telling is widely known - the account of the life expectancy of a cuckoo crowing. The soul of the deceased was personified in the images of kind welcome birds - a swallow, a dove, as well as a winged insect - a moth, a butterfly. Their arrival at the house was considered as a visit to the soul of the deceased or the arrival of God's messengers for the soul of a person. That is, in any case, it portends a new death. Domestic animals - dogs, cats, horses, cows, chickens - were and still are sensitive harbingers of death. A sure sign of the death of a family member was considered a dog howling and digging a hole.
Russian fortune-telling and omens reflect the theme of “construction sacrifice” - the death of a person in a newly rebuilt house. Therefore, the old man was usually the first to enter a new house, since the young member of the family was valued more than the one who is living out his day. And so that not a man, but an animal was the first victim of death, a rooster or a cat was locked in a new house for the night. And now, many try to be the first to put a cat there when entering a new apartment, not realizing that this is an echo of an ancient protective omen.
Until now, the belief about a broken mirror is widely known: a mirror is a reflection of the soul, a double of a person; a broken mirror is a shattered life. The folk custom of hanging mirrors in the house when someone from the family dies is connected with this.
The close death of a person was always indicated by an indoor flower, which never bloomed, but suddenly suddenly bloomed.
The influence of natural elements also did not remain out of sight of folk signs about death. The symbolic meaning of a star falling from the sky is well known, meaning the sunset of a person's life. The howl of the wind, the howl of the storm prophesied death: it was believed that during the storm the dead howl, as they are dissatisfied with living people and demand sacrifice from them.
And, finally, a very common omen, which has very ancient roots, - to see in a dream a dead person who is calling to him - also to death.
Superstitions associated with death can hardly be considered just disappearing remnants of ancient beliefs. There is evidence that these beliefs are not only transformed, but also revived in new conditions, in reality they find the basis for further existence. Each specific case, individual everyday details of life, which in ordinary times no one paid attention to, in a tragic coincidence of circumstances, retroactively acquire the symbolism of a sign. If a person died, then they recall some unusual event, natural phenomenon, loss (in a dream or in reality), preceding death: “It’s not for nothing that the flower bloomed at the wrong time,” “It’s not for nothing that the chicken crowed like a rooster,” etc.
The cessation of earthly existence, the impossibility of an afterlife existence always frighten a person. The folk customs reflected the attempts of the ancestors to interpret the inexplicability of the nature of death, say, by the intrigues of sorcerers. The natural sense of self-preservation led to the search for means of counteracting death, which manifested itself with special force at the moment of its approach. Hence the custom to close immediately after death windows, doors, the same mirror (as a special magical means of penetration) so that the evil spell does not enter the house, does not affect the living.
The imprint of Christian ideas is carried by the idea of ​​"good" and "bad", "difficult" and "easy" death. It seemed desirable, in the past and in the present, to die in the circle of relatives and friends without a long and painful illness. The presence of close relatives at the patient's bedside at the time of death was considered as an essential duty. This was connected, firstly, with the desire to receive the blessing of the dying person for the future life, and secondly, with the need to take measures to ease his death throes and help his soul in search of a way to the afterlife. According to popular beliefs, at the last breath of a person - the expiration of the spirit - the soul parted from the body and there is a struggle for the soul between the "unclean" force and the angel sent by God for the soul of the dying person. The death-throes were explained not by the severity of the illness, but by the fact that the dying person was tormented at the last minute by an "unclean" force (devil, devil), as if it did not give his soul to an angel. Trying to make the path to God easier for the soul, they put a candle in the hand of the dying "God" and incense incense around him.
Death was considered good on Easter, on the day of Christ's Resurrection, when, according to legends, the “heavenly doors” were opened by analogy with the royal doors in the temple. An easy death was regarded by the people as a reward for a pious life, a difficult one - as the lot of sinners.

The indefatigable psalter

The indefatigable Psalter is read not only about health, but also about repose. Since ancient times, ordering a commemoration at the Unsleeping Psalter has been considered a great charity for a deceased soul ..

It is also good to order the Unsleeping Psalter for yourself, support will be vividly felt. And one more important point, but far from the least important,
There is eternal remembrance on the Unsleeping Psalter. It seems expensive, but the result is more than a million times the money spent. If there is still no such opportunity, then you can order for a shorter period. And it's good to read it yourself.

Preparing for the funeral

In folk customs associated with funerals, three main stages can be distinguished.
Pre-burial ritual actions: preparation of the deceased for burial, ablution, dressing, positioning in the coffin, night vigils at the coffin of the deceased.
Funeral rites: taking out the type, funeral service in the church, going to the cemetery, saying goodbye to the deceased at the grave, burying the coffin with the body in the grave, returning relatives and friends back to the house of the deceased.
Memorial service: after the funeral and in the house of the deceased on the third, ninth, twentieth, fortieth days, six months, the anniversary after death, with the ordering of memorial services in the church, memorial meals and home prayers for the dead.
Many pre-burial actions, in addition to practical necessity, have an ancient, ritual origin. Death was thought of as a road to the afterlife, and ablution, dressing the deceased and other actions to prepare him for funeral - as if collecting on a long journey. Ablution had not only a hygienic chain, but was also viewed as a cleansing rite. According to the church doctrine, the deceased must go "to the Lord with a pure soul and pure body." The religious and magical character of ablution was emphasized by the fact that it was performed by a special professional category of people - washers. This profession often became the lot of old maidens and old widowers who no longer “have sin,” that is, intimate relationships with people of the opposite sex. If a girl did not marry for a long time, then she was frightened by the fact that she would “wash the dead”. The girls, who were engaged in “collecting” the dead and reading the Psalms over them, wore dark clothes. For their work, they received the underwear and clothes of the deceased. If there were no specialists - washers, it has long been accepted that the ablution of the dead should be performed by people who were not related to the deceased. According to church teachings, a mother was not supposed to wash her dead child, as she would surely mourn him; and this was condemned as a deviation from the belief in the immortality of the soul: according to the Christian doctrine, the child acquires a paradise life, and therefore his death should not be mourned. There is a popular belief that a mother's tear "burns a child."
In the past, the ablution procedure was of a ritual nature, magical, orientation. It was performed on the floor at the threshold of the hut. The deceased was laid on the straw with his feet to the stove. They were washed two or three times with warm water and soap from a clay, usually new, pot. The attributes of ablution - a pot, water, soap, a comb - were transferred to the properties of a dead man, his deadening power. They tried to get rid of them as soon as possible. The water with which the deceased was washed was called "dead", it was poured into the corner of the yard, where there are no plants, where people do not walk, so that a healthy person could not step on it. They did the same with water, which was used to wash the dishes after the commemoration. Such was the fate of clay pots for ablution: they were taken out into a ravine, to the "border" of a field, to a crossroads, where, as a rule, there was a cross, a pillar, a chapel, where they were broken or simply left. The purpose of these actions is to prevent the return of the deceased, so that he “does not appear” alive and does not “frighten” them. These places were considered scary by the people, and there were few daredevils who would dare to walk past them at dead midnight. The properties of ablution objects "deaden" the living were used in the practice of harmful magic: sorcerers used "dead" water to spoil the newlyweds, carpenters hammered a piece of shroud into the doorframe when building a house, when they wished trouble to the owner they did not like. The soap used to wash the deceased was used in home medicine for a different purpose - to suppress, moderate undesirable phenomena: wives served it for washing to evil husbands so that their "anger would die away", and girls washed their hands so that their skin would not flab.
Currently, the washing of the deceased is performed most often in the morgue. However, there are still found, especially in villages, old washing women. Of the ancient customs associated with this rite, many have already been forgotten, in particular, few people remember the magical properties of ablution items.
When dressing the deceased, those who see them off sometimes have difficulty in choosing the color of clothing, and most often prefer dark length for men and light for women. But it is interesting that in medieval Russia people were buried, as a rule, in white. This can be explained not only by the influence of Christianity, which associated this color with the spiritual, infant purity of the Christian soul - the soul goes to God as it came to earth at birth. The white color of the deceased's clothing is the natural color of homespun canvas, which has been the main clothing material for the Russian population since antiquity.
Magical properties have always been attributed to female hair, which is why, in the old days, it was considered sinful for a married woman to walk with simple hair, and in the church everyone - from babies to old women - was supposed to be wearing a headdress (which is usually observed even now). This was reflected in the burial costume as well. It was customary to bury women in kerchiefs: the young in the light, the elderly in the dark.
In general, the clothes of the deceased girl and the funeral itself were special in Russia. This is due to the popular understanding of the essence of death. The death of a young girl was a rare event. It was perceived not only as a transition to a new state, a new form of being, already beyond the grave, but also as a special stage of this being, similar to the earthly one. The death of young unmarried and unmarried people coincided in earthly life with marriageable age, with a turning point in earthly life - marriage. This served as the basis for comparing and combining the funeral rite with the wedding one.
Not only Russians, many peoples had a custom of dressing a girl who died in the prime of her youth in a wedding dress, preparing her for burial, like a bride for a wedding. At the funeral of the deceased girl, they even imitated a wedding ceremony, they sang wedding and wedding songs. Both the girl and the guy were put on a wedding ring on the ring finger of their right hand, while a married man and a married woman were not put on a ring.
Nowadays, there is also a custom to bury young girls in a wedding dress, and drink champagne at their commemoration, imitating a failed wedding.
In the past, the method of making funeral clothing emphasized its specific function - its intended purpose for the underworld. The clothes were, as it were, not real, but only a replacement for them, not sewn, but only mastered. It was necessarily sewn on the hands, and not on a typewriter, the thread was fastened, the needle was held from oneself forward; otherwise the deceased will come back to his family for someone. The shoes of the deceased were also imitations: as a rule, they did not bury them in leather shoes, but replaced them with cloth ones. In cases when boots were worn, the iron nails were pulled out of them. Onuchi, worn with bast shoes, tying them on the legs so that the cross formed by the laces falls in front, and not behind, as in the living. Thus, a kind of reverse direction was given to the movement of the deceased so that he could not return back to the house.
Previously, the custom was known to place the bed of the deceased and the clothes in which he died under a chicken roost and keep them there for six weeks (while the soul of the deceased, according to legend, is at home and needs clothes). The location of the clothing indicates the connection of the soul with the image of the bird. Nowadays, this belief is rarely remembered. Some relatives of the deceased keep their clothes and bedding until that time, but most of the belongings of the deceased are burned or buried.
At present, in the custom of burying in new, not yet worn clothes, there is an echo of the belief that the newness of the clothes of the dead is synonymous with purity, sinlessness of the soul, which should appear clean to the next world. Many elderly people prepare themselves a "death dress" in advance.
Although now, most often for economic reasons, it happens that people are buried in the old one - men usually in a dark suit, shirt and tie, women - in a dress or skirt with a jacket, as a rule, in light colors, but using special slippers as shoes - a ubiquitous phenomenon. They are included in a set of funeral accessories (as well as a cover imitating a shroud) of ritual offices. Slippers without solid soles, like shoes not intended to be worn, reflect the aforementioned custom of dressing the deceased in “fake” shoes and clothes.
Before (and sometimes even now), when the deceased was placed in the coffin, magical precautions were taken. The body of the abuse was not with bare hands, but mittens were put on. The hut was constantly fumigated with incense, they did not take out dirty linen from the hut, but swept it under the coffin, directing it towards the deceased. These actions reflect the fear of the deceased, the perception of him as the embodiment of a harmful, deadening vulture, from which you need to protect yourself.
While the coffin was being prepared, the washed deceased was placed on a bench covered with straw in the front corner of the hut so that his face was turned to the icons. Silence and restraint were observed in the hut. The coffin was accordingly regarded as the last real home of the deceased. An important element of gathering the deceased into the next world was the making of a coffin - "domina", a semblance of a real house. Sometimes they even made glazed windows in the coffin.
In areas rich in forests, they tried to make coffins hollowed out of a tree trunk. Different types of trees were used, but not aspen. The coffins were covered with something soft from the inside. The custom of making an imitation of a bed out of a coffin has been preserved everywhere. Upholstery covered with white material, pillow, bedspread. Some older women collect their own hair during life to fill their pillow.
The rules of Orthodox burial provide for putting in a coffin a layman, in addition to a pectoral cross, a small icon, a halo on his forehead and a "handwriting" - a written or printed prayer that absolves of sins, which is put into the right hand of the deceased, as well as candles.
The easily explainable custom of putting in the coffin things that may allegedly be useful to the deceased in the next world is still preserved, its roots clearly go back to pagan times.

This type of commemoration of the departed can be ordered at any hour - there are no restrictions in this either. During Great Lent, when the full Liturgy is performed much less often, in a number of churches they practice commemoration in this way - in the altar during the entire Lent they read all the names in the notes and, if they serve the Liturgy, then take out the particles. It is only necessary to remember that people baptized in the Orthodox faith can participate in these commemorations, as in the notes submitted to the proskomedia, it is allowed to enter the names of only the baptized deceased.

Seeing the departed

If the first stage of the traditional Russian funeral was a preparation for the journey to the afterlife, then the second stage was, as it were, the beginning of this road. The complex of rituals of this stage (removal of the body, funeral service in the temple, funeral procession at the cemetery, burial and return of relatives of the deceased to the house) is multifunctional. It includes both the fulfillment of Christian requirements and a series of protective magical actions based on fear of the dead.
The first include reading and praying "for the exodus of the soul." Although now in the city most often they try to transport the deceased to the morgue on the day of death, in Orthodox families, and in small towns and villages where there are no morgues, the tradition of night vigil around the deceased is preserved. In cases where a priest is not invited, the Psalter or other sacred books are read by lay believers. It often even happens that the night vigils of old women near deceased peers are not accompanied by the reading of Christian texts, but are held in the most ordinary memories or conversations - “I sat at the tomb, and they will sit with me”.
This detail of the funeral ritual is still steadily preserved: immediately after death, a glass of water, covered with a piece of bread, is placed on the shelf next to the icons or on the window.
At a memorial dinner, a glass of vodka covered with a piece of bread is left in a similar way, and sometimes this symbolic device is placed at the symbolic place of the deceased at the table. The most typical explanation for this is "the soul is at home for up to six weeks."
The origins of such a custom are probably as follows: it is a food sacrifice inherent in all ancient beliefs. In this case, however, it is difficult to determine to whom it was originally - the spirit of the deceased, ancestors, God, or is it a ransom from an evil spirit. Now this common, like others, element of the rite is more a means of alleviating loss, relieving the stressful psychological state of loved ones, maintaining the belief that, following tradition, they give the deceased their last duty.
One of the elements of the home mourning ritual is lighting candles at the head of the deceased, they are attached to the corners of the coffin, placed in a glass on the foot, and lamps are placed in front of the icons.
At present, the exact dates for the removal of the tepe, the funeral service, the funeral, in accordance with church rules, are rarely observed, and the clergy performing funeral services usually do not insist on accuracy. There is an opinion among the people that it is impossible to take the deceased out of the house before twelve o'clock and later than sunset.
It is curious that many folk rituals associated with the removal of the body by wires to the cemetery bear the imprint of pagan protective magic.
In the very psychology of the picture of death, the presence of a corpse among the living, there is a contradiction between life and death, hence the fear of the dead, as belonging to an incomprehensible world.
The dead man's danger for the living was that he could allegedly return to the house and "take away" someone close to him. The measures to protect the living include the custom of taking the body out of the house with notes forward, trying not to touch the threshold and doorframes in order to prevent the deceased from returning on his trail.
There is also a well-known custom of “replacing the place” of the deceased. On the table or chairs on which the coffin stood in the house, after the removal of the deceased, they sit down, and then this furniture is turned upside down for a while. The meaning of this rite is the same as the method of taking out the coffin - an obstacle to the return of the deceased.
In the past, at a Russian funeral, as soon as the coffin was brought out, one of the relatives of the deceased fell on the place where it stood, or the mistress of the house herself sat down. In the north, in Siberia, as soon as the deceased was taken out, a stone or a log was placed on the front corner of the hut, or a dough was placed so that another member of the family would not die. There was also such a custom; one of the relatives walked around the coffin three times with an ax in his hands, holding it with the blade forward; during the last round, he hit the coffin with his butt. Sometimes, when carrying out the dead, an ax was placed on the doorstep. Archaeological materials indicate that a superstitious attitude towards axes goes back to ancient times. Among the ancient Slavs, the ax was a symbol of Perun and was associated with thunder and lightning, and therefore was an amulet, a talisman against evil spirits harmful to humans. In later times, he also played for the deceased a frightening role from the "evil" forces or for the house from the deceased himself.
The considered group of customs includes the widespread among many peoples, including the Slavs, the custom of carrying the deceased out not through the front door that serves as the living, but through a window or a specially made hole. Its meaning is to deceive the deceased in order to "confuse his trail"; according to beliefs, a dead person can return to a house only in a way known to him during his lifetime. But now this custom, especially in the city, is very rare.
Since ancient times, in the Slavic rural communities - the source of our ritual traditions - death was of a social nature. The perception of the death of one of the members of the rural collective in the public consciousness was reflected not as a narrow-family event, but as a socially significant event, disrupting the course of village life, and the more significant the personality of the deceased, the wider the district was drawn into the orbit of ritual actions aimed at neutralizing the lethal force. coming from the deceased, preventing evil that he could cause in the future, ensuring his benevolence and help.
The deep ideological basis of this phenomenon, dating back to the cult of ancestors and its connection with agrarian cults, was later rethought and was correlated with the social environment of the rural community. The motive for ensuring the benevolence of the deceased was that the deceased in the next world would meet the souls of people who accompanied him on earth. In accordance with the norms of customary law, funerals were the business of the entire rural community; participation in them was compulsory for all fellow villagers, and their conduct was controlled by the community.
The funeral rite had a certain moral and ethical aspect. When the body of the deceased was taken out of the house, it was customary among the people to cry loudly, openly disguising their grief with lamentations. They showed the public assessment of the life of the deceased, manifested his reputation. Not only close relatives of the deceased, but also neighbors lamented over the coffin. If the relatives did not cry, the neighbors questioned the family's feelings of affection for the deceased. The crying had an impact on public opinion regarding the living. "Howling" was considered a tribute of respect and love to the deceased. By the number of howling women (not relatives), it was possible to determine what the relationship of the deceased was with the neighbors.
Even the Old Russian Church imposed a ban on the cries of the people and crying - "not to cry for the dead." The funeral lamentation was regarded as a manifestation of pagan ideas about the fate of the soul behind the grave, the lack of Christian faith in the immortality of the soul among the people. As mentioned, mothers were not supposed to cry over dead children. In folk religious stories, the mournful fate of dead children, mourned by their mothers, was depicted in visual images: dead children were portrayed either in clothes heavy from mothers' tears, or sitting in a swamp, or carrying tears shed by their mothers in heavy buckets. However, the church prohibition was not observed in everyday life.
Peter I, with his characteristic passion for administration, even issued a special decree prohibiting crying at funerals, which had no effect.
The procedure for organizing and following the funeral procession in different regions of Russia in the past was basically the same type. The funeral procession was led by a person carrying a crucifix or an icon framed by a towel. Then followed one or two people with a coffin lid on their heads, followed by the clergy. Two or three pairs of men carried the coffin, followed by close relatives. The funeral procession was closed by neighbors, acquaintances, curious.
Interestingly, the custom of carrying a coffin in one's hands is relatively late. In Russian villages, even in the last century, for superstitious reasons, they often tried to carry the coffin in mittens, on towels, on poles, on a stretcher.
The same kind and method of transporting the coffin to the cemetery. In some places, they tried to deliver the dead man to the burial place on a sleigh, even in summer. The sleds were then either burned, or left up to the fortieth day with runners lying up. In this custom, one can notice the intertwining of the pagan rite of burning the corpse together with a means of transportation for the afterlife and a magical obstacle to the return of the dead.
When the deceased was taken out of the house, in the past, the rite of "first meeting" was performed, symbolizing the close connection between the dead and the living. It consisted in the fact that the person who first met the funeral procession on the way was handed a piece of bread wrapped in a towel. The gift served as a reminder for the “first person to meet” to pray for the deceased, and the deceased, in turn, was the first to meet in the next world who received bread.
On the way to the temple and from the temple to the cemetery, grain was scattered to feed the birds, which serves as another confirmation of the dual concept of the posthumous existence of the soul in the form of its zoomorphic image or as an incorporeal substance.
The funeral procession, according to the Church charter, was supposed to stop only in the church and near the cemetery, and, as a rule, it stopped in the most memorable places for the deceased in the village, near the house of a deceased neighbor, at crossroads, at the crosses, which in some localities were called so "Deceased". Here some of the people seeing off stopped, followed mainly by relatives. The initial meaning of this rite, apparently, was to confuse the tracks so that the deceased could not return to the living, and later this was interpreted as parting of the deceased with those places with which his life was connected.
At modern funerals, a ban is sometimes fulfilled - the custom does not allow children (sons) to carry the coffin with the body of their parents and bury the grave. In the past, the ban was due to the fear of another victim in the family, fear of the magical ability of the deceased to take a blood relative with him to the grave. At present, the coffin is often carried by workmates and distant relatives.
In general, the ceremony of carrying the coffin has now changed significantly in comparison with the past. At socially significant funerals, famous persons, with a large gathering of relatives, friends, colleagues of the deceased, they try to carry the coffin in their arms where conditions permit, as long as possible, as a sign of respect for the memory of the irrevocably departed person.
The composition of a modern mourning procession is usually as follows: first, they carry wreaths, then the lid of the coffin - with a narrow part in front, the coffin with the deceased. Behind the coffin, relatives and friends are the first to go, then everyone who sees off.
The well-established civil ritual of the funeral also determines the composition of the funeral procession with elements that were impossible in the past and in the Orthodox ritual: the funeral music of a brass band, carrying a portrait of the deceased in a black frame in the procession, carrying pillows with orders and medals, farewell speeches. It is interesting to note that these days there is often a bizarre confusion of civil ritual with the church. For example, the installation on the grave at the same time of an Orthodox cross and a portrait of a deceased person.

Memorial service

The funeral service begins with the usual exclamation: "Blessed is our God always, now, and ever, and forever and ever." Then the Trisagion according to our Father is read. Lord have mercy 12 times. Glory to this day. Come, let us bow ... psalm 90: "Alive in the help of Vyshnyago ...". In this psalm, before our spiritual gaze, there is a gratifying picture of the transition into eternity of a truly believing soul along the mysterious path leading to the abodes of the Heavenly Father. In the symbolic images of asps, lions, skimns and dragons, the psalmist expresses the ordeal of the soul on this path. But here the psalmist also depicted to us the Divine protection of the faithful soul of the deceased: "He will deliver you from the catcher's net, from the fatal ulcer; He will overshadow you with His feathers, and you will be safe under His wings; the shield and the fence are His truth." The faithful soul says to the Lord: "My refuge and my protection, my God, in whom I trust."

Funeral

The burial ceremony was performed before sunset, when it is still high, so that "the setting sun could take the deceased with it."
This, as well as, for example, the lowering together with the coffin into the grave of church candles that burned during the funeral service, does not contradict the legal provisions of Orthodoxy. Just like the last kissing of the deceased by close ones and relatives, which exists to this day, as well as the custom on the part of the mourners to throw a handful of earth into the grave with the wishes: "May the earth rest in peace to you." However, instead of this phrase, you can briefly pray: "Rest, Lord, the soul of your newly departed servant (name), and forgive him all his sins, voluntary and involuntary, and grant him the Kingdom of Heaven." This prayer can be performed before starting the next meal during the commemoration.
There was also in some places such an archaic element of ritual as the custom of throwing small money into the grave. There were several popular interpretations of this custom. One is like the ransom of a place in the cemetery for the deceased, which is additional evidence of the connection of the deceased with the place of his burial - the grave, the earth. If the places are not bought, the deceased will come to living relatives at night and complain that the "master" of the underworld is driving him out of the grave. According to another version, money was put in so that the deceased could buy a place for himself in the next world.
According to the popular Christian interpretation, money placed in a coffin or thrown into the grave was intended to pay for transportation across the river of fire or to pay for free passage through ordeals. This ceremony remains stable and is performed regardless of what age, social and professional group the deceased belonged to during his lifetime.
Sometimes a “tear” handkerchief is thrown at the grave. After the grave is filled up, wreaths are placed on the grave mound, flowers are placed in the center. Sometimes a cross or a temporary obelisk, a memorial plaque with the last name, first name, date of birth and death, is immediately erected.
It is considered a rule not to erect a permanent monument at the grave earlier than a year after death.
The tragedy of parting with him at the burial, which is natural for those who have loved and lost a loved one, is accompanied by crying, lamentations of women. But few people imagine that lamentations like “Oh, mommy, who did you leave me to ...”, “That you got together so early, my beloved husband” contain elements of formulas of pagan grave lamentations, which are at least two thousand years.
The traditional food for the graveyard digging workers, a short memorial meal at the churchyard with drinks "for the remembrance of the soul", with kutya, pancakes, with scattering food leftovers on the grave for birds (souls of the dead) exists everywhere even now.
In the past, a special way of remembering the soul was "secret" or "secret" charity. She obliged the neighbors to pray for the deceased, while the prayer took on part of the sins of the deceased. The "secret" alms consisted in the fact that the relatives of the deceased for forty days laid out alms, bread, pancakes, eggs, boxes of matches, sometimes larger things - scarves, pieces of cloth on the windows, on the porches of the poorest neighbors and others. Like all commemorations were a sacrifice, alms were also sacrificial food. In addition to the "secret" charity, there was open, open charity - "as a token of memory" - the distribution of pies, cookies, sweets to the poor and children at the gates of the cemetery. During the funeral service, they also handed out to those present a roll and a lit candle. In many places, each participant in the commemoration was handed a new wooden spoon, so that when they ate with this spoon they would remember the deceased. To save a sinful soul, a donation was made for a new bell so that it would “ring” the lost soul from hell, or they gave a rooster to the neighbors to sing for the sins of the deceased.
Now, in addition to the distribution of alms to the cemetery and church beggars, there is also a special form of alms-commemoration - the distribution of handkerchiefs at funerals to some loved ones. These scarves are supposed to be carefully stored.

Mourning and commemoration

In the past, in accordance with popular ethical standards, family members of the deceased were required to observe certain forms of mourning. The requirement to observe mourning extended both for a long period - a year, and for a shorter period - six weeks after death. The most common forms of mourning are the wearing of mourning clothes, the prohibition on the marriage of a widow and the marriage of a widower, and the marriage of adult children. The original meaning of mourning clothes - changing the usual appearance in order to prevent the return of the deceased - has long been lost, but the custom persists to this day.
Mourning also meant giving up entertainment, dancing, and songs. As mourning clothes, people of poor people used ordinary work clothes. But in some, especially in the northern provinces of Russia, an old national dress was worn during the period of mourning.
Mourning, "grieving" on the occasion of the loss of the breadwinner, the mistress always lasted longer than mourning for the elderly. And now the observance of mourning for the deceased has not lost its significance: wearing a dark dress, a black scarf for up to 40 days, frequent visits to the cemetery, a ban on entertainment and participation in secular holidays, etc. ... A longer period of wearing a black or dark dress (a year or more) is due to the severity of the loss. They are worn more often by mothers who have lost their adult children who died prematurely.
Up to one year, sometimes widows also observe mourning. Daughters who have buried their elderly parents are cutting their mourning clothes to six weeks, or even one week. Men put on a dark suit only to participate in the funeral ritual, and subsequently do not observe the outward signs of mourning.
As a sign of mourning, mirrors are curtained in the house, the clock is stopped; a television set is taken out of the room where the coffin with the body of the deceased stands.
Traditionally in Russia, funerals have always ended with a commemoration, a memorial dinner. The joint meal consolidated the funeral rite, was and remains its not the saddest, but, on the contrary, sometimes even life-affirming part.
The funeral rite, to a greater extent than other family rituals, has a function of family and social psychological association. It manifests itself in the fact that the ceremony forms a feeling of closeness with one's family, a kindred collective, a rural community - through rallying in grief, overcoming misfortune, sharing the loss of a family, uniting in support.
At the same time, the ceremony carried the idea of ​​a historical connection between the living and the dead, the continuity of life in the alternation of generations. The meaning of the commemoration is to awaken and maintain memory, memories of deceased ancestors. In the memorial ceremony, the memory was always preserved that the dead were once alive, and that the memory was thought of as an action in which the deceased is embodied and becomes, as it were, a participant in it.
In some forms of commemoration, which have preserved the tradition of inviting a wide public circle, it is possible to restore the idea of ​​the connection of the clan collective. In this regard, the composition of the participants in the memorial table immediately after the funeral and on the fortieth day is indicative. In the 19th century, commemoration was a family rite, gathering mainly relatives and friends. The veneration of the dead was domestic in nature. But in some places there was a tradition that comes from the depths of centuries that any person can come to the commemoration. The clergy were invited as guests of honor.
The popular belief was that prayer eases the fate of a sinful soul behind the grave, helps her avoid hellish torments. Therefore, the relatives of the deceased ordered a funeral service (mass) in the church with the commemoration of the deceased for six weeks after death - magpie. The poorer one ordered the magpie to the reader, who for forty days read the canon at the deceased's home. The names of the dead were recorded in the annual commemoration - synodik.
Traditional terms of commemoration of the dead as part of family rituals were focused on the dates set by the church. In addition to the church, one of the ways for the dissemination of religious information about memorial dates was popular literature intended for popular understanding, in particular, the running "Remembrance", which tells about the fate of souls in the afterlife. In the popular environment, the following memorial days were celebrated: the day of the funeral, the third and sixth days after death - rarely, the ninth and twentieth - not always, the fortieth - necessarily. Then they "celebrated" half a year, an anniversary, and then - already within the framework of the calendar ritual - parental days followed.
In the act of the joint memorial meal, a certain symbolism of the ritual dishes was preserved: they were more symbolic than ritual in nature. Ethnic flavor can be traced in the set of dishes, the order of their change, the time of the ritual meal. The Russian diet was based on bread. Bread in its varieties has always been used for ritual purposes. The funeral meal began and ended with kutya and pancakes, complemented by pancakes. At the commemoration, archaic types of food were used - kutia, porridge, which were distinguished by their ancient origin and ease of preparation. Kutia in different localities was prepared in different ways from wheat grains boiled in honey, from boiled rice with sugar and raisins. Porridge (barley, millet) was also used as a memorial dish, with which the Russians had an idea of ​​the special power that it contained. Serving food was strictly regulated. According to the sequence of dishes, the memorial meal was in the form of a dinner. The first is chowder, cabbage soup, noodles, soup. The second is porridge, sometimes fried potatoes. Snacks - fish, jelly, as well as oatmeal jelly and honey. On fast days, the memorial table included mainly lenten dishes; on fast days, the dishes traditionally included meat soup and chicken noodles. Wine (vodka) was used at the commemoration, but not everywhere.
Of the series of commemoration dates, the fortieth day was the climax. According to popular explanation, this period is related to that. that for forty days the soul of the deceased is on earth. God does not “define” her either to hell or to heaven, angels carry the soul of the deceased to the places where the deceased sinned, and his soul atonements for sins. On the fortieth day, God's judgment is performed and the soul leaves the earth completely. According to popular belief, the soul of the deceased on the fortieth day "appears" in his home for a whole day and leaves only after the so-called "vacation" of the soul, or "conduction". If the "wires" are not arranged, then the deceased will suffer. In the wires of the soul, the care of the living about the afterlife of the dead was expressed.
Sometimes the traditions of the fortieth day were touching and naive. They prepared in advance for the arrival of the deceased: they washed the house, in the evening they covered the bed with a white sheet and a blanket. No one could touch the bed, it was intended exclusively for the deceased. In the morning, a plentiful dinner was prepared, at which there was a lot of wine. By noon, the table was laid, relatives and friends gathered. The invited priest served the lithium. At the table, he occupied the main place, on the right side of him they left an empty place for the deceased. At this place, under a napkin, they put a plate, a glass of wine, vodka, and put bread. Bowing to this place, the owners, as it were, turned to the invisible deceased: "Eat, darling." After dinner, "eternal memory" was proclaimed and the farewell to the deceased began, accompanied by crying. The eyes of the relatives turned towards the church and the cemetery, as it was believed that before leaving forever, the deceased said goodbye to his grave.
A special role in the memorial ceremony was played by a towel - a symbol of the way, a sign of the way home. Usually in the corner of the house, near the window, they hung a towel, which was there, and for forty days it was intended for the soul of the deceased, which, according to legends, for forty days goes to "its place" and, arriving at the house, wipes its face with a towel.
The commemoration, which was held in the next period after death - until the fortieth day, and then six months and a year later, was performed as a family rite, a rite of the life cycle, a family rite. They were characterized by a closed character, the presence of a narrow circle of relatives, close family members. It is aimed at a specific person, a specific family member. Their goal is to preserve kinship ties with the dead.
Memorials on parental Saturdays have always been observed by the people with special care. Yes, and in the memorial service that happened on other days, many tried to submit a note about prayer for the peace of the soul. Due to the low literacy of the population, almost every family had a synodikon compiled for the family by a priest with lists of the names of the deceased who should be commemorated in the church.
To this day, the commemoration is not only one of the traditional forms of expression of pity and compassion, but also a stable form of communication between the population, as evidenced by the participation of usually a large number of relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, and colleagues who come to them without a special invitation. They are one of the most powerful means of transmitting folk traditions from one generation to another. This is the most important reason for the preservation of their existence among the people. In the memorial meal, ceremonial food and drink are preserved, and not individual dishes are kept, but often their traditional set.
Most often, the memorial table is an ordinary solemn table, only with a more modest decoration of the dishes. However, it was noted that many consider it more decent to use homemade compote or jelly, which is characteristic of Russian cuisine, rather than purchased lemonade: from strong drinks - vodka and Cahors ("church wine"), and not cognac, champagne, etc.
Nowadays, visiting the graves of the dead on Orthodox Holidays - Easter and Trinity - is becoming more and more widespread. The primary role in the non-church side of the modern ritual of Easter is played by a joint meal with the dead, which goes back to the pagan sacrifice. On the graves (on plates, on paper) offerings are placed in different sets, for example, several colored eggs, a piece of cake, an apple, candy or crumbled cake; peeled eggs; or on a table by the grave of millet, a few pieces of cookies.
Sometimes they leave a glass of alcohol on the grave "for the deceased." Or, if the family is having an impromptu meal at the cemetery, a glass of vodka is poured onto the grave.
On Easter and Trinity, it is customary to repair, tint a cross, a monument, a fence (spring renovation of the "house of the deceased"), and decorate the grave with flowers. On Trinity, the custom of using wildflowers and wreaths of birch branches hanging on crosses and fences is especially touching.
So, in the Russian funeral rite, despite the sad, sometimes even tragic nature of its cause - the death of a person - many very old traditions are preserved that serve to unite the family and rally all our people, the bearer of an ancient and great culture.

Those who have Christian names are remembered for health, and only those who are baptized in the Orthodox Church are remembered for repose.

At the liturgy, you can submit notes:

On the proskomedia - the first part of the liturgy, when for each name indicated in the note, particles are removed from special prosphora, which are subsequently lowered into the Blood of Christ with a prayer for the forgiveness of sins

Days of special commemoration of the departed (parental days)

Every day of the week in the Orthodox Church is timed to coincide with a special commemoration (of the Most Holy Theotokos, John the Baptist, etc.). Saturday is dedicated to the memory of all saints and deceased. On Saturday (meaning rest in Hebrew), the Church prays for all those who have passed from earth to the afterlife, both perfect (saints) and imperfect, whose fate has not yet been finally decided. In addition to daily prayers and Saturdays, there are separate days in the year, mainly devoted to prayers for the dead. These are the so-called parental days (in Russia it was customary to call all deceased ancestors parents):
1. Meatless universal parental Saturday - a week before Lent. This Saturday received the name of the meat-plant on the day following it - "Week of the meat-plant", that is. the day on which meat food is last allowed.
2. Parental Universal Saturday of the 2nd week of Great Lent.
3. Parental Universal Saturday of the 3rd week of Great Lent.
4. Parental Universal Saturday of the 4th week of Great Lent.
5. Radonitsa - Tuesday of the second week after Easter. This day is called Radonitsa to commemorate the joy of the living and the departed about the Resurrection of Christ.
6. May 9 - the day of commemoration of all those who died during the Great Patriotic War (the resolution on the commemoration was adopted at the Bishops' Council, which took place in November-December 1994).
7. Trinity ecumenical parental Saturday - Saturday before the day of the Holy Trinity. (At the present time, there is a wrong custom to consider the holiday of the Trinity as a parental day).
8. Demetrius Saturday - Saturday one week before the feast of memory of the great martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki (November 8 in a new style) - Heavenly Patron of the Blessed Grand Duke Demetrius Donskoy. Having won a victory on the Kulikovo field, Prince Dimitri made a memorial by name of the soldiers who fell on the battlefield on the eve of his Angel day. Since then, the Church commemorates on this day, called by the people Dimitrievskaya Sabbath, not only the soldiers who died for the Fatherland, but also all the departed Orthodox Christians.
9. In addition, on the day of the Beheading of the head of the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord John (September 11, new style), the Church commemorates the Orthodox soldiers, for the Faith and the Fatherland on the battlefield of the slain. Commemoration on this day was established in 1769 during the war with the Turks and Poles by order of Empress Catherine P.
On parental days, Orthodox Christians visit churches where funeral services are performed. On these days, it is customary to sacrifice at the funeral table (eve) - various products (with the exception of meat). After the memorial service, food is distributed to the servants of the temple in need, sent to orphanages and nursing homes. Food is also brought to the funeral table on other days, when a funeral service is ordered, as this is alms for the departed.
On spring and summer parental days (Radonitsa and Trinity Saturday), it is customary to visit the cemetery after church: fix the graves of deceased relatives and pray next to their buried bodies. The custom of leaving various food on the graves has nothing to do with Orthodoxy. These are all echoes of pagan feasts. In some places there is a custom in Radonitsa to bring to the cemetery and leave there colored eggs and sweets, as if symbolically celebrating Christ with the dead. But it is better not to do this, but, having mentally consulted with the deceased, eat the egg yourself. Otherwise, this food will simply be pecked and eaten by birds and dogs, staining, in addition, on the grave.
It is a great sin in the cemetery, where our loved ones rest, to drink alcohol. The best thing that you can do for them is to make a prayer, even such a short one: “Rest, O Lord, the souls of the departed, Thy servant, all our relatives and friends, and forgive them all sins, voluntary and involuntary, and grant them the Kingdom of Heaven ".

Home prayers for the dead

The Holy Church considers the prayer for the departed to be a necessary part of not only worship in the church, but also home rule. Of course, the main thing is the church commemoration of the departed, together with the pastors. But home prayer is also our duty to the departed, proof of our love for them. Home prayer is all the more necessary in the days of commemoration of the dead, if it was impossible to commemorate them in church.
On the third, ninth, fortieth days and anniversaries (where it is customary, also on the twentieth day and six months), the memory of the deceased should be honored by reading the Panikhida. In all forty days after death, the time of special commemoration, when the fate of the soul of the deceased is being decided, the Canon of the deceased should be read daily. All these sequences can be read both at home and in the cemetery. On other days, you can read either the Panikhida, or separately the Canons about the departed, the deceased. They also commemorate the dead on the Psalter and read the commemoration in the morning (and, if desired, in the evening) prayers. On Saturday you can read one of the Canons about the Departed for all your relatives.
The Great Canon about the dead in the church is performed only twice a year - on Meat and Trinity Ecumenical Parental Saturdays. But in home prayer, you can read it at any other time - at will and according to your strength, with the blessing of the confessor. This is the commemoration of all of the departed Orthodox Christians from the century. There is a pious custom - once a year to commemorate all your relatives, both in home prayer and in a memorial meal. You can choose for this either a day of remembrance of someone from your family, or just some convenient day for commemoration, when, according to the Charter, home funeral prayer is allowed, that is, not on holidays and not on Sundays. It should be especially noted that the composition and limits of your home prayer should be consulted with the priest, and most importantly, with your spiritual father.