20.

 Why, according to the textbook, do we pray for the reposed?

            Protopriest Victor Potapov compares the Orthodox practice of praying for the reposed with the rejection of that practice on the part of the Protestants. Fr. Victor writes that:

The Orthodox confession of faith is completed by a lively expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. Whoever does not believe in the future life, whoever does not believe in the future last, righteous judgment of God, whoever does not believe in a recompense for the righteous and punishment for evil is not Orthodox and is not a Christian.

Whereas we Orthodox believe in the efficacious power of prayer for the dead, sectarians reject prayers for the dead on the grounds that there is no direct commandment in Sacred Scripture concerning prayer for the dead and because a man's fate beyond the grave supposedly depends exclusively on what he himself was personally during his earthly life and, finally, because believers have one Mediator — the Savior Jesus Christ Himself.

But if prayer for the dead is really not spoken of directly in the Word of God, this our duty with regard to them follows of itself from the obligation of Christians to support the communion of love between themselves, which is, with regard to the dead, expressed in prayers for them. The Apostle James persuades us to pray for one another (James 5:16) and adds that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”; the Apostle Paul exhorts to pray for all men (1 Tim 2:1); St. John the Theologian — especially for sinners (1 Jn 5:16). One must not presuppose that these exhortations related only to the living, since the dead are also members of Christ's Church, just as we are, and a man's death, from the Christian point of view, ought not to break the communion existing between him and those remaining among the living. “For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him,” says the Lord Jesus Christ (Lk 20:38). “Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's,” teaches the Apostle Paul (Rom 14:8).

As for the citations by the Protestants on passages in Sacred Scripture wherein the matter concerns the recompense to each man according to his works (Ps 6:6, Gal 6: 7, 2 Cor 5:10 and others), these passages speak either about the fact that the dead themselves cannot change their lot or about the condition of the dead after the Dread Judgment; but the benefit of prayers for the dead is not denied.

Finally, it is completely true that our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the “one Mediator between God and men.” Thus the Orthodox Church teaches, and thus it is said repeatedly in Sacred Scripture, especially often in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. But, after all, we Orthodox, in our requiem prayers, do turn precisely to Him, our Savior, as children of His Church.

Commemoration of the dead and Church prayers for them are a primordial, Apostolic Tradition of the Church, preserved wholly in her throughout all the centuries. Already in the fifth century, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a participant in the Second Ecumenical Council, in explaining the structure of the divine services and mysteries to the catechumens who had entered the Church in his time, wrote apropos of the Church's commemoration of the dead at the Liturgy: “It will be a very great advantage to the souls, for whom the supplication is put up, while [the Holy Sacrifice] is presented” [Mystagogical Catechesis V, ch. 9). Particles taken out from the prosphoras in commemoration of the living and the dead are placed on the discos at the foot of the Lamb, where they remain until that moment when they are put into the chalice with the words: “By Thy precious blood, O Lord, wash away the sins of those commemorated here, through the prayers of the saints.” [Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy].

There is no division between the living and departed in God and in His Church. Whether alive or dead, all belong to a single family, and all are one in the love of God.

            The departed members of the Church continue to live after death, only in a different form than here on earth, and they are not deprived of spiritual nearness to those who remain on earth. Thus the bond of prayer with them on the part of the pilgrim Church on earth does not stop. “Neither death nor life... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38). The departed need only one kind of help from those on earth: prayer and petition for the remission of their sins.

            The Church Militant prays for its members who have died with true repentance. In praying for them as well as for those who are alive, the Church follows the words of the Apostle Paul: “Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For this end Christ both died and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living” (Rom 14:8-9). For this reason, the faithful departed are remembered in this prayer of the Holy Liturgy:

Again we offer unto Thee this reasonable worship for those who have fallen asleep in the faith: ancestors, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, Apostles, preachers, Evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith.

The custom of praying for the dead also existed in the Old Testament Church. In the days of the pious leader of the Jews, Judas Maccabeus, an inspection of those who had been killed in battle revealed that in their garments was plunder from the gifts offered to idols. At that time, all the Jews “blessed the ways of the Lord, the righteous Judge, Who reveals the things that are hidden; and they turned to prayer, beseeching that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out.” Judas Maccabeus himself sent to Jerusalem to “provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted well and honorably” (2 Mac 12:39-46).

            Christ stated that “whoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come” (Mt 12:32). It can naturally be concluded from these words that the remission of sins for those who have sinned not unto death can be given both in the present life and after death. Likewise from the word of God it is known that Christ has “the keys of hell and death” (Rev 1:18). Christ therefore has the power to open the gates of hell by the prayers of the Church and by the powers of the propitiatory Bloodless Sacrifice that the Church offers for the departed.

            All the ancient Liturgies of the Christian Church — both East and West — testify to the Church's remembrance in prayer of the dead. This remembrance is seen in the Liturgy of the Holy Apostle James, the Brother of the Lord, in the Liturgies of St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory the Dialogist. Similar references are to be found in the Roman, Spanish and Gallican Liturgies, as well as in the ancient Liturgies of the Armenians, Ethiopians, Syrians, Copts, Jacobites, and others. There is not a single one of these Liturgies where there is no prayer for the dead. The testimony of the Fathers and teachers of the Church speak of the same thing.

            The Church intercedes for the dead in its prayers, just as it does for the living. This intercession is not done in its own name, but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 14:13-14), and by the power of His Sacrifice on the Cross, which was offered for the deliverance of all. These fervent prayers aid the seeds of the new life which departed Christians have taken with them. If these seeds have not been able to open up sufficiently on earth, they gradually open up and develop under the influence of prayers and with the mercy of God. Nothing can revive rotten seeds, though, and prayers for the dead who have died in impiety and without repentance, who have quenched in themselves the Spirit of Christ (1 Thes 5:19), are powerless. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows that there is no deliverance from hell for these people, that they cannot be transferred into the bosom of Abraham (Lk 16:26). Indeed, these people usually do not leave behind on earth people who might sincerely pray to God for them, and they have not acquired friends among the saints in Heaven, who, when they fail (that is, die), might receive them into everlasting habitations — that is, might pray for them (cf. Lk 16:9).

            On earth, it is not known to what lot each has been subjected after death, but prayers for the departed can never be profitless. If the departed ones have been vouchsafed to dwell in Heaven, they reply to our prayers for them with an answering prayer for us.