If you have found this page because someone has died, here is the short answer first. An Orthodox funeral is a service of psalms, hymns, and prayers sung over the body of the departed — usually with the casket open — asking God to give that person rest and forgiveness, and declaring over the body that Christ has beaten death. Afterwards the family will ask for memorial services: on the third, ninth, and fortieth days, then once a year, often with a tray of sweetened boiled wheat called koliva. If you are not Orthodox, you are welcome to come and grieve with the family. Nothing will be required of you.

If someone in your own family has just died, call the priest before you call anyone else, and before anything is arranged. He will speak to the funeral home and tell them what the Church needs. Almost every difficulty families run into comes from the arrangements being made first and the parish being told second.

Underneath all of it lies one conviction: the departed have not ceased to exist, and love is not cancelled by death. The Church calls death an enemy, weeps at it honestly, and sings the Resurrection into the middle of the weeping.

What Orthodox Christians Believe About Death

Orthodoxy does not teach that death is natural, or that God made it, or that it is a friend. Death is an intruder. St. Paul names it plainly: "The last enemy that will be destroyed is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26). At an Orthodox funeral you will not hear that everything happens for a reason. You will hear lament.

The Fathers add a second thing that must be held with the first: God turned even this to mercy. St. Gregory the Theologian teaches that in barring the way back to the tree of life, God kept evil from becoming immortal, so that the punishment itself became a mercy (Oration 45.8). Death is not good; it is an enemy God has bounded, so that our corruption would not be permanent.

And the enemy has already been defeated. The central proclamation of the faith is sung at Pascha (Easter): "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." Christ did not avoid death; He entered it and broke it from within, descending into Hades — the realm of the dead — and emptying it, and the funeral hymns lean harder on that than on anything else.

So what do we hope for? Not the escape of a soul from a body. The Creed ends: "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come." A human being is body and soul together. This body was baptized, anointed with holy chrism at chrismation, and fed with the Body and Blood of Christ; it is no container to be discarded, but will be raised and reunited with the soul at the general resurrection — the subject of our article on the end of the world. Meanwhile the departed are said to have "fallen asleep." St. John Chrysostom told grieving Christians: "This thing is sleep, not death; removal, not destruction; a journeying from the worse unto the better" (Homily 41 on First Corinthians §9).

Why We Pray for the Departed

Is praying for the dead biblical? Yes — and it is older than the question. Scripture shows it, and the Church has never stopped doing it.

Christ says of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, "For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him" (Luke 20:38). St. Paul prays for Onesiphorus, apparently already departed: "The Lord grant to him that he may find mercy from the Lord in that Day" (2 Timothy 1:18). In 2 Maccabees 12:43–45 Judas Maccabeus takes up a collection for a sin offering on behalf of fallen soldiers, grounding it in the hope of the resurrection — a book the Orthodox Church receives as Scripture, though most Protestant Bibles omit it.

The Fathers are unambiguous. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, instructing the newly baptized in the mid-fourth century, describes the Liturgy's commemoration of all who have fallen asleep, "believing that it will be a very great benefit to the souls, for whom the supplication is put up" (Catechetical Lecture 23.9). St. John Chrysostom urges his people never to grow weary of aiding the departed (Homily 41 on First Corinthians §8).

What the Church does not do is explain the mechanism. We are told that the Church is one body, that love is not severed by death, and that we may therefore ask — the same logic by which Orthodox Christians ask the saints to pray for us. The departed are commemorated at every Divine Liturgy, the Orthodox service of Holy Communion, and the short service for one departed person goes by different names: in Greek usage the Trisagion, Greek for "thrice-holy," after the prayer that opens it; in Slavic usage the Litiya, with the fuller Panikhida. All of them begin the same way: "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us."

The Funeral Service: What Actually Happens

Customs differ between jurisdictions, but this shape is widely recognizable. First comes a vigil: in Greek practice the priest serves the Trisagion prayers at the funeral home the evening before; in Slavic practice the Psalter is read over the body, sometimes through the night. The body is not left alone. On the day itself the casket is carried into the church to the chanting of "Holy God." Then:

  • Psalm 118 (119), the long psalm of the blameless man who walks in the law of the Lord — the same psalm chanted on Holy Saturday before the flower-covered bier of Christ. The Church sings over your mother what it sings over Christ in the tomb.
  • The Evlogitaria of the dead — short resurrection hymns, the name meaning "the blessings" — each introduced by the refrain of Psalm 118 (119):12, "Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes."
  • The funeral hymns of St. John of Damascus, sung through the eight tones Orthodox chant cycles through. The man who wrote the joyful Paschal canon wrote these too, and they are unflinching about death.
  • The kontakion, the short hymn at the heart of the service: "With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Your servant, where there is no pain, no sorrow, and no sighing, but life everlasting."
  • The readings, normally 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 and John 5:24–30. The epistle tells Christians not to "sorrow as others who have no hope" — notice that it does not tell them not to sorrow.
  • The last kiss — when everyone present, family first, comes forward to say goodbye at the casket — and the final hymn, "Memory eternal." In some places the priest pours oil from the vigil lamp and casts earth on the body here; in others that is done at the graveside.

At the grave the Trisagion is served again as the body is committed, and the family usually hosts a meal afterwards — the makaria, or "meal of mercy." Some traditions serve a funeral Divine Liturgy beforehand; in much of Greek practice the funeral stands alone.

Why the Casket Is Often Open

This startles many visitors, and it is deliberate. The refusal to hide the body follows from the refusal to treat it as disposable: these remains were washed in baptism, sealed with chrism, and communed at the chalice, and the Church treats them with the reverence that also produces the veneration of relics. It is also honest. Fr. Alexander Schmemann's phrase for Lenten worship — a bright sadness — fits an Orthodox funeral exactly, and you cannot have it if the room has been arranged so nobody must look. An open casket is customary rather than required; where law, distance, or the condition of the body makes it impossible, the priest decides pastorally.

Memorial Services: The Third, Ninth, and Fortieth Days

Memorial services are traditionally offered on the third, ninth, and fortieth days after death, and again at one year. The pattern is ancient, already prescribed in the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions.

The numbers have been explained in more than one way. The third day has always been referred to Christ's rising. The Apostolic Constitutions grounds the fortieth in the mourning for Moses, though Deuteronomy 34:8 gives that mourning as thirty days; later Orthodox writers refer it instead to the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension (Acts 1:3). The ninth is commonly connected with the nine ranks of angels. The Church has not settled on one reading, and nothing in the practice depends on which you prefer.

What these days really do is pastoral. Grief does not end when the funeral does, and the fortieth day arrives precisely when the casseroles have stopped and the phone has gone quiet. It puts the family back in church, surrounded by people, saying the name out loud again. In practice the dates are adjusted: memorials are usually served after the Divine Liturgy on the nearest Sunday, and your priest will tell you which.

Saturdays of Souls and Annual Memorials

The Church also prays for all the departed together on set days, and Saturday is the natural choice: it is the day Christ lay in the tomb. These are the Saturdays of Souls, Psychosavvata in Greek, "souls' Saturdays": Meatfare Saturday, the weekend the Church stops eating meat, a week and a half before Great Lent begins; the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of Great Lent; and the Saturday before Pentecost, in late spring. Which of these a parish keeps varies, and Slavic parishes keep others besides — Radonitsa, a joyful visit to the graves on the Tuesday after Thomas Sunday, the first day memorials resume once Bright Week has ended, and a Saturday in autumn before the feast of St. Demetrius. Ask your parish what it keeps.

On these days the faithful submit lists of baptismal names to be read aloud, and a general commemoration gathers in everyone never prayed for individually — the forgotten, the unclaimed, those whose families are gone. Families also keep an annual memorial on the anniversary of a death. There is no point at which the Church declares a person sufficiently prayed for.

Koliva: The Wheat of the Resurrection

At memorial services you will usually see a tray of boiled wheat, mounded and covered in powdered sugar, with a cross traced on top, the departed's initials on the sides, and a candle burning in the center. This is koliva — koljivo, colivă, or kutia in other Orthodox languages.

Its meaning comes straight from Christ's words: "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain" (John 12:24). The buried grain is the buried body; the sweetness of sugar, raisins, and nuts is the life to come; and the mound's shape suggests a grave. Recipes vary widely, and the koliva is blessed and shared with everyone present, who traditionally respond, "May God forgive him" (or her), or "Memory eternal."

What the Church Does Not Teach: Purgatory and the Unknown

The Orthodox Church does not teach purgatory. Stated fairly, the Roman Catholic doctrine holds that those who die in God's grace but imperfectly purified undergo a purification after death, historically framed in terms of temporal punishment and satisfaction owed for sin. Orthodoxy has never received it. At the Council of Ferrara–Florence, in the purgatory debates of 1438, St. Mark of Ephesus objected especially to a defined third place, to punitive fire, and to the framework of satisfaction. He did not, however, deny that the departed can be helped by the Church's prayers. That is the Orthodox position in short: the prayer is affirmed, the theory attached to it declined.

What, then, is the state of the soul between death and the general resurrection? Here the Church is genuinely restrained. Tradition speaks of a foretaste — a real anticipation of joy or of sorrow — which is not yet the final judgment, since that awaits the resurrection of the body at Christ's return. Beyond that, the mechanics are not dogmatized.

One more thing, in case you meet it. Some Orthodox writers describe the soul's journey after death in terms of "aerial toll-houses," a vivid and sometimes alarming picture. It has been commended by serious Orthodox writers and questioned by others, and the Church has never received it as dogma; it is properly a theologoumenon — private theological opinion, not the faith of the Church. No one may require it of you as a test of Orthodoxy, and no grieving family needs to carry it. The Church likewise refuses to pronounce on the eternal fate of any individual, a question we take up in what happens to those who never heard of Christ. We commend; we do not sentence.

Burial, Cremation, and What to Ask Your Priest

The Orthodox Church buries her dead. Christ was buried and rose bodily, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and burial is the practice that matches both.

Cremation is harder. If cremation is being considered, or has already happened, call the priest. He has heard this before, and the conversation is not an interrogation. What follows is background, not a verdict on your family.

The Church's instinct is burial, because the body is not a container the person has discarded but part of the person, awaiting the resurrection. Jurisdictions differ on what follows from that. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese teaches that the funeral presumes the body is present, and so is not served where a body has been cremated; the Orthodox Church in America answers that cremation is not permitted under Byzantine canon law, while allowing rare applications of economia — pastoral exception — in extenuating circumstances. Other jurisdictions handle the particulars differently, and only your own bishop's directives govern your case.

Two things are true alongside that. The departed is not cut off from the Church's prayer: even under the strictest of those rubrics the name may be given at the Saturday of Souls commemoration, and nothing stops you praying for them yourself. And exceptions belong to the bishop, who can and does apply economia — his judgment to make, not a website's. The same goes for autopsy, organ donation, or a civil authority that mandates cremation: ask early. Simplicity in casket and clothing is a long-standing Orthodox instinct, and some parishes and burial societies help families arrange a simple burial; whether that is possible where you live is a question for your priest.

If You Are Attending as a Guest

If you are not Orthodox and have been invited, here is what to do. The service usually runs between forty-five minutes and an hour and a half, with a shorter graveside service after. Most Orthodox churches in North America have pews or chairs; where there are few, people stand and sit as they need to.

  1. Arrive a few minutes early, dressed as for any funeral. Take a candle if one is offered at the door, light it from one already burning, and stand it in the tray of sand near the entrance.
  2. Stand when the congregation stands, and sit when you need to. You are not expected to cross yourself, bow, or join the responses.
  3. If the funeral includes the Divine Liturgy, do not go forward when the priest brings out the gold cup. Communion is reserved for Orthodox Christians who have prepared, and this is not a judgment on you.
  4. Near the end, people file forward past the casket for the last kiss. You may bow your head, touch the edge of the casket, or kiss the small icon resting on the departed's chest. Bowing from where you stand is completely acceptable, and nobody is checking.
  5. Accept the koliva when it is offered. Greeting the family, "Memory eternal" is what Orthodox Christians say to one another and is a kindness from anyone; "I am sorry for your loss" is just as welcome.
  6. Go to the meal afterwards if you are invited; sitting with the family is the point. Customs about flowers and memorial donations vary, and the funeral home will know what this family has asked for.

And a word to anyone reading this while grieving. Orthodoxy will not tell you that your loss is a blessing in disguise, and it will not hurry you. It will tell you that the person you love is alive to God, that your prayers for them are neither futile nor foolish, and that the Church will go on saying their name as long as anyone asks her to. If you do not know where to begin, find a parish and speak to a priest.

Common Questions

What do I say to the family?

"Memory eternal" is what Orthodox Christians say to one another, and it is welcome from anyone. So is "I am sorry for your loss." Saying something ordinary and staying a while is better than finding the perfect phrase.

Can a non-Orthodox person receive an Orthodox funeral?

Ordinarily no: the service is written for baptized Orthodox Christians. A priest may often serve a Trisagion or offer private prayers instead, and practice differs between bishops. Ask him directly.

What happens if someone dies by suicide?

The decision belongs to the bishop. In contemporary practice a funeral is normally granted where mental illness or diminished capacity was involved, though the bishop's permission is required and usually rests on medical evidence. Call the priest first; he will take it to the bishop. The Church does not pronounce on anyone's eternal fate.

Do Orthodox Christians believe the departed go straight to heaven or hell?

Orthodoxy speaks of a genuine foretaste of joy or sorrow, but the final judgment belongs to Christ's return, when the body is raised. The state of the soul in between has not been dogmatized, and Orthodox writers differ.

How do I request a memorial service?

Telephone the parish, give the departed's baptismal name, and say which memorial you want — the fortieth day, an anniversary, or a Saturday of Souls. The priest will tell you when it is served and whether to bring koliva.

Is it wrong to cry at an Orthodox funeral?

No. Christ wept over the death of His friend Lazarus (John 11:35). Scripture tells Christians not to grieve as those who have no hope — not to stop grieving. The funeral hymns themselves lament openly before they sing of the Resurrection.

Further Reading

  • O Death, Where Is Thy Sting? — Fr. Alexander Schmemann (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press). Short essays on death and hope.
  • The Orthodox Way — Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press). The best short introduction to the Orthodox vision.
  • A Christian Ending — J. Mark and Elizabeth Barna (Divine Ascent Press). A practical handbook for traditional Christian burial.
  • Christ the Conqueror of Hell — Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press). The descent into Hades, behind every funeral hymn.
  • Life After Death — Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos (Birth of the Theotokos Monastery). A detailed Greek treatment of death.