Koliva is boiled wheat mixed with nuts, raisins, and spices that we bless at memorial services for the departed. It’s a physical sign of our belief in the resurrection.
When someone dies, their family prepares koliva for the funeral and brings it again at the 40-day memorial, the one-year anniversary, and sometimes on Soul Saturdays throughout the year. You’ll see it at the memorial table near the icon of the departed, usually decorated with powdered sugar and sometimes the person’s initials spelled out in Jordan almonds or silver dragées.
The wheat itself carries the whole meaning. Christ said it plainly: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” That’s John 12:24, and St. Paul picks up the same image when he talks about resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. The wheat dies in the ground. It looks finished. But it comes back multiplied.
That’s what we believe happens to us.
The other ingredients aren’t just filler. Sugar represents the sweetness of Paradise. Raisins point to Christ’s blood and the vine. Pomegranate seeds show the unity between the living and the dead in the Church. Parsley (yes, parsley) symbolizes green fields of rest. Some families use nine ingredients to represent the nine orders of angels. Every Orthodox cook has her own recipe, passed down or adapted, and if you ask three people how to make it you’ll get four opinions about whether you toast the breadcrumbs or how much cinnamon is too much.
The priest blesses the koliva during the memorial service, usually with holy water, while he reads the names of the departed. Then after the service we share it with everyone there. You take some home in a small bag or eat a spoonful right there in the parish hall. This isn’t just about remembering someone who died. It’s communion with them. They’re still part of the Church, still alive in Christ, and we’re still connected through prayer and through physical things like this blessed wheat.
If you grew up Baptist or non-denominational here in Southeast Texas, this probably seems strange at first. We’re not used to mixing food and worship, or at least not beyond potlucks and coffee hour. But Orthodox Christianity is deeply physical. We believe matter matters. God became flesh. He rose in a body. We’ll rise in bodies. So we use physical things (bread, wine, oil, water, wheat) as means of grace and connection.
The tradition goes back to the early Church, though it has roots even in ancient Greek customs of offering grain for the dead. Christians baptized the practice, gave it new meaning through Christ’s resurrection. There’s a story about St. Theodore the Recruit providing wheat to Christians during a famine under the Emperor Julian, and that’s why we sometimes make koliva on his feast day. But mostly it’s for our own departed: your grandmother, my uncle, the longtime parishioner everyone remembers, the child who died too young.
You don’t have to make koliva yourself if you’re new to this. Someone at the parish can help, or there are families who know how and will walk you through it. The recipe isn’t complicated, just time-consuming. Boil the wheat berries until they’re soft but not mushy. Drain them well. Mix in the other ingredients. Spread it on a tray and decorate the top. Bring it to church.
What matters isn’t perfect technique. It’s the act itself. You’re saying with your hands and with wheat and sugar that you believe your loved one will rise. You’re feeding the parish in their memory. You’re participating in something Christians have done for centuries, this simple, strange, beautiful practice of blessing food and sharing it and proclaiming through it that death doesn’t get the last word.
