You grieve, but not as those who have no hope. The Church gives you permission to weep, to feel the wound of death, and at the same time holds you within the reality that Christ has trampled down death by death.
Death isn’t the end. That’s where we start. When someone dies, the soul separates from the body but doesn’t cease to exist. The person you love is still alive in Christ, still part of the Church, still connected to you. We don’t believe the departed are “gone” or sleeping in some unconscious state until judgment day. They’re awake, aware, and held in God’s presence. The Church calls this the communion of saints, the living and the dead together in one Body.
What that presence feels like depends on the person’s relationship with God. The Fathers talk about God’s love as a kind of fire. For those who’ve grown close to Christ, it’s warmth and light. For those still being healed, it’s purifying. For those who’ve rejected God entirely, it’s torment. But we don’t obsess over the mechanics. We trust that God is merciful and that our prayers matter.
And we do pray for the dead. This surprises people coming from Protestant backgrounds, where you’re taught that once someone dies, that’s it, their eternal state is fixed and nothing you do makes a difference. But we believe sanctification continues after death. Your prayers, your alms, your participation in the Liturgy on behalf of someone who’s died, these things help them. The Church has always done this. We’re not trying to earn someone’s salvation or bribe God. We’re asking for mercy, for healing, for their growth in holiness. Because love doesn’t stop at the grave.
Grief Is Not a Sin
Let’s be clear about this. You’re allowed to cry. You’re allowed to feel devastated. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb even though He was about to raise him from the dead. The Church doesn’t expect you to paste on a smile and say, “It’s all good, they’re in a better place now.” Death is an enemy. It’s a rupture, a violence done to human nature. It hurts because it’s supposed to hurt.
What the Church asks is that your grief not turn into despair. Sorrow is one thing. Despair, the belief that death has won, that there’s no hope, no resurrection, no reunion, is another. We mourn, but we mourn within Pascha. We cry, but we cry at the foot of the empty tomb.
This isn’t easy. Especially in those first raw weeks and months. But the Church doesn’t leave you alone with it. There are services, prayers, rhythms that carry you when you can’t carry yourself.
What the Church Does
When someone dies, the parish gathers. There’s a funeral service, usually Vespers for the departed, then the funeral itself, sometimes a Divine Liturgy. The body is brought to the church, censed, prayed over. We sing “Memory eternal.” We read Psalms. We ask God to forgive the person’s sins and give them rest in the place where there’s no pain or sorrow. It’s liturgical, not sentimental. The focus is on Christ’s victory, not on eulogizing the person’s accomplishments or telling stories about how great they were. (You can do that at the meal afterward.)
Then come the memorial services. We hold them on the third day, the ninth day, the fortieth day, and on the anniversary of death. These are called Panikhidas. They’re shorter services where we pray specifically for the person by name. Families often bring kollyva, boiled wheat mixed with sugar and fruit, symbolizing death and resurrection. You take it to the parish, the priest blesses it, and everyone shares it after the service.
If you’re used to Baptist funerals in Southeast Texas, this will feel different. There’s no altar call, no “we’ll see him again if you’re saved” pressure. There’s no closure, really, because we don’t think of death as closing anything. The person is still with us, still in need of prayer, still connected. You’ll keep praying for them every time you go to Liturgy. Their name gets commemorated. You’ll light candles for them. You’ll give alms in their memory.
Living in the Meantime
Grief doesn’t follow a schedule. You don’t “get over it” in six months or a year. But the Church gives you tools. Go to Confession. Receive Communion. Both of these are described by the Fathers as medicine for immortality, antidote to death. When you commune, you’re united to the risen Christ, and through Him to everyone else in His Body, including the person you’re mourning.
Pray for them. Not complicated prayers necessarily. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on the soul of your servant [name].” You can say that a hundred times a day. You can say it when you’re driving to work at the refinery, when you’re lying awake at 2 a.m., when you’re standing in the grocery store and suddenly remember something they used to say.
Ask the saints to pray for them too. The Theotokos, St. Michael (our parish patron), whatever saints you feel close to. They’re alive, they love us, and they have boldness before God. Let them help carry this.
The Long View
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware once said that for Orthodox Christians, death is a beginning, not an ending. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Not some vague spiritual existence, but actual bodies raised and transfigured, reunited with souls, living in the new creation. That’s the hope. Not that your loved one is “in a better place” in some abstract sense, but that you will see them again, touch them again, know them again, only healed, whole, fully alive in God.
Does that take away the pain right now? No. But it gives the pain a shape, a direction. You’re not grieving into a void. You’re grieving toward a reunion.
In the meantime, let the Church hold you. Come to services even when you don’t feel like it. Let people bring you food. Accept prayers. Don’t try to white-knuckle your way through this alone. We’re the Body of Christ. When one member suffers, we all suffer. That’s not just a nice saying. It’s how we actually live.
