Fr. Mark Sietsema

Recently one of the families of the parish asked me to prepare a flyer for non-Orthodox visitors at one of our funerals. I am including it here as an appropriate extension of the series of articles on the Orthodox understanding of Death.

The Funeral Service of the Greek Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Christian funeral service is one of the most beautiful and meaningful rituals in the life of the Church. It is rich in Scripture, in symbolism, and above all in faith that what to earthly eyes appears to be an ending is really by God's grace a beginning.

There are many aspects of the funeral service that may seem unfamiliar if you are visiting our Church. Perhaps the first thing you will notice is that the casket stays open for the service. This is so that the departed one can, in a very real sense, attend church and participate bodily in the act of worship for one last time in this world. (For this reason Orthodox funerals are held always at the church and never in the funeral home.) If you listen carefully, you will notice that many of the readings and the hymns are spoken from the point of view of the departed one, voicing his or her prayers from the state of death.

The casket also stays open so that the body can be blessed in preparation for its "planting" in the ground as a seed that will sprout forth at the time of the future resurrection. "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." These words of Jesus Christ in John 12:24 express our Christian understanding of the importance of the body even after death. It is not merely a shell, to be thrown away once the soul has no more use for it. The bodies that we have in this world will be given back to us in a glorified form in the world to come. For this reason, we use the funeral service as one last opportunity to shower dignified affection and attention upon the bodies of our loved ones. This is also why our Church does not allow cremation, since this is considered a desecration of the image of God in our bodies.

The Orthodox funeral service is broken up into three parts (which taken altogether comprise an entire Matins, which is the service of Morning prayers.) The first part is the Trisagion prayer, typically offered at the funeral home on the evening before the funeral. The second part takes place in the church and is the funeral proper. The third part is a repeat of the Trisagion prayer offered at the cemetery as a final blessing before burial.

The funeral proper is composed of several Scripture readings, hymns, and prayers. The departed one is escorted into the church with the angelic hymn "Holy God, Holy (and) Mighty, Holy (and) Immortal, have mercy on us." At the end of the service, the same angelic hymn is chanted to usher the body out again. After the priest intones the opening blessing of God, select verses from Psalm 119 are chanted. Psalm 119 is the prayer of the righteous man who puts his trust entirely in God throughout all the ups and downs of life: good times and bad, persecution, vindication, uncertainty and assurance. It is, prophetically speaking, the consummate prayer of Jesus Christ.

Why choose this Psalm to chant? Because in our Orthodox Christian understanding, salvation means having the living Christ within oneself. "It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me," says Saint Paul in one place (Galatians 2:20); "Christ in you, the hope of glory," as he says in another (Colossians 1:27). Every Orthodox Christian—king or peasant, slave or freeman, rich or poor—is buried in exactly the same way in our Church. Every Christian is buried like Christ himself. For this reason the funeral service and the services of Good Friday have many similarities.

The Psalm 119 verses are followed by a set of hymns known as the Benedictions (in Greek, Evlogitaria). These hymns in particular are chanted as if in the voice of the departed one, calling out in faith to God for mercy on His fallen creation. The connection between our sin and our mortality is clearly expressed in these hymns. Thereafter, the congregation stands for the blessing of the departed one's body by censing as we chant the hymn: "Among the saints grant rest, O Christ, to the soul of Your servant, in a place where there is no pain, no sorrow, no sighing, but everlasting life."

Following the censing, the congregation sits to hear the ancient hymns of Saint John of Damascus (8th century AD). These eight hymns, each one in a different mode (musical scale) offer a well-rounded meditation on the nature of death. There is in our Orthodox tradition no denial about the reality or sadness of death. The words of these poems reflect a sober, wide-eyed understanding of the tragedy of every man's end, while at the same time expressing an unshakeable faith in the ultimate victory over death by the Resurrection of Christ from the tomb on the third day.

These hymns end with a chanted recitation of the Beatitudes, reminding the living of what is important in life—growth in virtue rather than acquisition of material goods. These reminders of spiritual blessedness end with the thrice-repeated line: "Blessed ever be the way upon which you go today, for a place of rest has been prepared for you."

Thereafter follow two Scripture readings, the first from Saint Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians (4:13-18) and the second from the Gospel of John (5:25-30). Both express the promise of the coming resurrection of all humanity on the last great day of Christ's second coming. On this note of great hope, the service ends with prayers that call upon Christ as the conqueror of death to extend His victory also to the one whom we love.

After the eulogy, the congregation is called forward to offer the departed one last gesture of love: depending on the relationship of the mourner to the departed, this may be expressed by a bowed head, a touch of the hand, or a kiss and partial embrace. Thereafter the priest anoints the body with oil and sand as a final blessing at the closing of the casket. After the interment at the cemetery, we gather for a makaria, a "blessed" luncheon of bread and fish in imitation of the meal Christ served His disciples after the Resurrection (John 21:13), expressing our hope in the resurrection of our loved ones. At memorial services we also prepare grains of wheat (boiled and sweetened) to be blessed and distributed, in remembrance of Christ's words about the seed that falls into the ground.

Although the Orthodox funeral service speaks openly and frankly about the facts of death, it is worth noting that in reference to the Orthodox Christian who is being buried, the words "dead" or "died" are never used! Instead, we speak in Scriptural terms of the one who has "fallen asleep" or "departed." This choice of vocabulary, although subtle, is nonetheless a powerful comfort to the living. For we are reminded that the God in whom we place our trust is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Those whom we love still live somehow by grace "in a place of light, a place of refreshment, a place of repose." And while they are experiencing rest, we pray that they may be remembered eternally—in our own hearts, but above all in the heart of our loving and forgiving Heavenly Father.

"Give Glory to God!"

These words sound like an invitation to worship. And they are. But they have a more particular meaning in our Biblical tradition than a simple call to praise. They are a call to confession.

When Achan, one of the ancient Israelites, secretly pillaged a Canaanite city in violation of the express command of God, Joshua called him forth to confess, saying, "My son, give glory to the LORD God of Israel, and render praise to him; and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me" (Joshua 7:19).

After Christ healed the man blind from birth, the Pharisees sought to prove that this miracle was a fake. They summoned the formerly blind man and charged him to come clean with these words, "Give glory to God! For we know that this man [i.e. Jesus] is a sinner" (John 9:24). This same expression is used elsewhere in the Scriptures in reference to confession of sins (e.g. Malachi 2:1, 1 Esdras 9:8).

Confessing our sins openly to God is an act of worship. Like the physical act of bowing down and prostrating oneself, acknowledging our wrongdoings is a gesture of submission and vulnerability. Confession of sins to God implies that God has the right and the authority to dictate our behavior: it is an expression of His greatness and Lordship. It also expresses a trust in God, that He will not use our self-exposure against us, but will forgive. Far more than any words of doxology or deeds of humility, confession of sins demonstrates to God that we see ourselves and Him in the proper perspective.

The very name of the Sacrament of Confession in Greek, Exomologesis, picks up on the idea that naming one's faults is an act of praise. In other contexts, we translate this same word "O give thanks [unto the Lord]!" (cf. Psalm 136:1-Exomologeisthe to Kyrio). The Sacrament of Confession is really a kind of liturgy. For this reason it is customarily performed-not in a special little booth off to the side-but in the sanctuary, like any other service in the Orthodox Church.

In the mysteries (sacraments) of the Orthodox Church, we take something from the world of creation-bread and wine, water or oil-and we offer it to God in prayer and faith, so that He in return will make that thing a conduit of His divine grace. Paradoxically, in the Mystery of Confession, the thing that becomes the means of grace is our own sin-or more precisely, the verbal expression of our confession to God. This is an amazing thing, and a powerful experience to those who have availed themselves of the mystery.

There is, then, a double motive in coming forward to confess one's sins openly. The first is the desire of the Christian heart to give all glory to God; the second is the desire to receive a blessing from Him in spite of ourselves. When we acknowledge our faults, we overturn the sin of our ancestor Adam, who sought to put himself in the place of God. By saying, "I have sinned," we affirm the proper relationship between ourselves as servants and God as master.

This February, the Sunday Gospel readings contain a pronounced element of "confession as praise." On the Sunday of Zacchaeus, we see the once ruthless tax collector became a changed man, openly acknowledging to the Lord Jesus that he had defrauded others wrongly (Luke 19:8). On the Sunday of the Canaanite Woman, we hear a woman of idolatrous belief own up to her spiritual poverty, and receive grace from the Lord (Matthew 15:21-28). On the Sunday of the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, we learn from Christ the simplest words of confession that unlock the storehouse of divine forgiveness, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). On the Sunday of the Prodigal, we understand the two dimensions of repentance, the vertical and the horizontal: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you!" (Luke 15:18).

In all these cases, we see that confession is more than simply feeling sorry for one's sins. True confession-God-glorifying and grace-bringing confession-involves necessarily the verbalization of one's faults. You have to say it. Out loud.

This is what God wants. He wants us to speak aloud our sins. This is not for His sake-as if we could tell Him something He doesn't know! Confession is for our sake. Confession is a therapeutic necessity; it is a critical part of a complete regimen of spiritual hygiene. Just as we might take an emetic or an expectorant to help rid our bodies of a nasty bug, so too we eject the spell of sin by expelling it through the windpipe and vocal cords. There is something spiritually powerful about vocalizing our transgressions, with the result of cleansing our souls.

For this reason the Apostle James says without qualification, "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed" (James 5:16). Over time and with the rapid growth of the Church, it became prudent for the "one another" of this precept to be fixed as the clergy (or a specially designated layperson). The principle, however, remains unchanged from Apostolic times: we confess to God through the Church.

It is for this reason that Christ committed the authority to forgive to His Apostles, and this authority is transmitted to their successors through the mystery of laying on of hands. So important, so central is this ministry of forgiveness to the work of the Church! In fact, the very first thing that Christ said to His assembled Apostles after the Resurrection was the declaration of this authority to forgive sins on earth: "Receive the Holy Spirit: if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:22-23).

Through the gift of the Spirit, the Church is constituted as the very body of Christ. As His divine-human body on earth, the Church exercises Christ's own authority to forgive sins. In other words, the Sacrament of Confession is a celebration of Christ's Kingship over all the world, a recognition that He has "all authority in heaven and on earth" (Matthew 28:18). Confession, therefore, is the quintessential Christian act of praise.

The medieval spiritual writer Jalalu'l-Din Rumi once wrote, "Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise." In other words, we don't fail in our duty to worship God because we are depressed: we are depressed because we fail in our duty to worship God!

Are you feeling spiritually blue? Then give glory to God. Perhaps the missing component of your spiritual life is the act of confession. It is a form of worship that God commands for our health and welfare. As we approach Great Lent once again, there could not be a better time to avail yourself of this central ministry of your Church.

---Fr. Mark