Tea of ​​the Resurrection of the Dead A few old parishioners were the true adornment of our parish. They went to the service regularly, on Sundays and holidays. They knew their own worth: they say, there are few of us like that. All the old men were neat and stately: chest with a wheel, beard with a shovel.

Temple of the Resurrection Has Come Holy Week; desiring to fast on these holy days, from Monday I closed myself in the very Temple of the Resurrection, whose keys, to the shame of Christians, were in the hands of infidels. Several families from time immemorial bought out the right to own them and received

Tea of ​​the Resurrection of the Dead A few old parishioners were the true adornment of our parish. They went to the service regularly, on Sundays and holidays. They knew their own worth: they say, there are few of us like that. All the old men were neat and stately: chest with a wheel, beard with a shovel.

Will human bones come to life?

I tea the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come

How can we best honor our departed loved ones?

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"Orthodoxy and Peace..

—Father Eugene, please tell us about your pastoral work and holding divine services for deaf people. How it all began?

– Divine services in sign language is a completely new phenomenon for the Russian Orthodox Church. Before the revolution, schools for the deaf were created at churches, but services in sign language were not held.

There were very few books about Orthodox mission among the deaf, both now and then. Among them, the best pre-revolutionary textbook of the Law of God for the deaf can be considered a small brochure by Archpriest Alexander Bratolyubov. It explains the most basic Christian concepts.

The first community for the deaf in Moscow was founded in 1991 at the Novodevichy Convent. Worship services and meetings began to be held. Of course, there were difficulties with the translation. There were simply no such gestures as “Lord”, “Virgin Mary”, “Church”, “Communion”. Some of the gestures that we now use are partly taken from the English sign language alphabet. There was a completely new creative work, which has no earlier analogues.

There were errors at some stages. Someone tried to conduct a confession of a deaf person with the participation of a sign language interpreter. Until now, confessing in your native sign language remains a problem. Only a small number of clergy know sign language and can take confession. Basically, the deaf submit their list of sins on a piece of paper to the priest and confess in this way.

Ideally, the shepherd himself should communicate directly with the deaf in gestures without the help of an interpreter. And then it is really a full-fledged Orthodox community, and not a Protestant assembly mimicking Orthodoxy, headed by a lay preacher.

Now all the efforts of the Coordinating Center for Work with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing of the Department for Church Charity and Social Service of the Russian Orthodox Church are aimed at teaching the clergy to sign language. In Russia, no more than 20 clerics know sign language. As practice shows, those priests who have learned sign language while studying at the seminary are fluent in it. Those who have taken holy orders and want to further learn sign language may not always succeed in this.

Of course, there are objective reasons - the priest is often alone in the parish, he is entrusted with many obediences, and there is little time left to study a separate unique linguistic system of signs with its own grammatical rules and constructions.

From a missionary point of view, deaf people can be considered a separate nation with their own characteristics of communication, behavior and speech. The preaching methods in this regard are exactly the same: the Japanese need to preach on Japanese, deaf - in sign language. Work with the deaf is at the same time social, catechetical, missionary, and educational.

Deaf people are one of the most difficult categories of disabled people for catechesis and churching. The Apostle Paul says that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17).

It is much easier for a blind person to accept a sermon. For this, there are a sufficient number of records of divine services, akathists, hymns, lectures, there are Orthodox radio and television channels. The deaf person, on the other hand, is in some informational isolation and therefore he does not know how to come to the temple, how to confess, how to take communion. After all, nothing is clear, and no one in the church can explain anything in his language.

That is why communication with a priest is so important and necessary so that the priest not only knows how to translate prayers, but knows how to understand the deaf. Already after simple everyday communication and questions “how are you doing”, “where does your child study?” - the soul of a person opens, and you can talk with him on spiritual topics. It must be understood that knowledge of sign language is the key to the heart of the deaf.

In Moscow, a survey was conducted in which deaf people were asked about their wishes for hearing people. Almost everyone said that the hearer should know sign language. This is evidence that the deaf are hungry and willing to communicate. Therefore, some may come to the service only for the sake of interest.

There are very few events for the deaf in Russia (not in Moscow), there are no performances in sign language, no holidays. And this hunger for communication, the desire to get out of the shadow of oblivion, can lead a person to the temple for service. And only then, through this interest and a simple desire for communication, a deaf person begins to learn about Christ.

Of course, it is a utopia to require the presence of a sign language interpreter in every parish as a staff unit. But we must strive to at least ensure that in one temple of each big city there was a catechist or cleric who knew sign speech. I note that it is difficult to notice a deaf person as a person in need of help, to single them out from the crowd, but in fact there are about thirteen million deaf people living in Russia.

Deaf people sing the Trisagion Hymn during the Liturgy

– Is there a dictionary of liturgical terms for the deaf, it seems that such work was carried out in Synodal department?

- Officially, under any Synodal department or spiritual educational institution the dictionary of church sign language was not published. There are small dictionaries, their authors are priests or lay people who translate services for the deaf. But these dictionaries do not have official blessing or approval.

At this stage, a dictionary that would have the blessing of the Holy Synod or the Holy Patriarch is not needed. After all, no one approved the Liturgy of Basil the Great or the Liturgy of John Chrysostom through the Holy Synod, we accepted the rites from the Byzantine Church, and now the process of formation does not stop - something is added, something is reduced.

For example, now at the Liturgy we read a prayer for peace on Ukrainian soil, this is a temporary phenomenon, then this prayer will either be abolished or a new one will be written. The same with the dictionary for the deaf - the sign language changes and differs depending on the region, in some churches, where sign language interpretation has been carried out for 15-20 years, there is a specific charter, established gestures that are used, and people understand them.

There may be translation variations, especially if we talk about the variable part of the service - the gospel and apostolic conceptions, troparia. Each sign language interpreter will translate them differently. But before improving sign designations, it is necessary to meet with deaf people and explain what this gesture, invented by someone, means. Probably, now there is no need to create a general dictionary with the heading “Approved by the highest church authority”, but, of course, some available manuals are needed as a help and basis.

– How difficult is it to perceive a service for the deaf, because the liturgical language is particularly complex?

– Of course, if a non-church person comes to church, some Church Slavonic words may be incomprehensible to him. But in the process of churching, participation in worship becomes conscious. But when a hearing person comes to church, he hears prayers in Church Slavonic, while a deaf person “hears” prayers in his native sign language, so sometimes it is easier for a deaf person to understand the service. For example, "packs and packs" is translated with the gesture "again and again", i.e. the service is conducted in the native language of deaf people, which they communicate on a daily basis.

The problem of understanding worship must be considered in a slightly different plane. Deaf people have different levels of education and, as a result, levels of understanding. Among them there are late-deafened, hearing-impaired, with concomitant diseases, etc. There are those who have received higher education while others, for one reason or another, were only able to graduate from secondary school. And, of course, the translator must think about how to make the worship service understandable and accessible.

And again, the way out in this situation is catechism meetings and conversations. We cannot lower the liturgical church language itself to the level of a schoolboy. For it is the same among those who hear. People with different levels of education can be in the temple. But this does not mean that worship should be simplified.

– Much depends on the translator?

– Yes, the translator must be church-going and always prepare to translate liturgical texts unfamiliar to him. Ekaterina Dyatlova, a sign language interpreter from Kyiv, said that she is still starting to prepare for the Sunday service from Thursday, namely, she is thinking over options for translating the variable part of the Divine Liturgy. I note that she has been translating services for more than ten years. It is impossible to come right away, open the Gospel and already know how to translate correctly and intelligibly; it is a painstaking linguistic work.

After all, it also happens that the words of the Creed “I have tea for the resurrection of the dead” were translated incorrectly. The verb "tea" was translated with the gesture "tea", i.e. drink instead of "I'm waiting." Due to misunderstanding Church Slavonic secular sign language interpreters are afraid to work with the Church and teach sign language to the clergy.

A church sign language interpreter must not only possess a certain amount of Christian knowledge, but lead a truly Christian life. Each member of the All-Russian Society of the Deaf knows about the life of his translator - something about his life, family, therefore, receiving information about the Church, the deaf person compares the church teaching with the life of the informer himself, concluding whether it is possible to believe not only this particular person, but also the Church .

I dare to suggest that it would be a lesser sin not to translate the service than to translate with the help of a non-Orthodox or secular sign language interpreter who has nothing to do with the Church. Indeed, in the Church, the translator is not just a mouthpiece or transmitter of information, but its conductor and prayer book. If a sign language interpreter says a prayer in gestures, he must pray himself.

After all, translation can be done in different ways. For example, convey the general meaning: “Now a prayer has been heard for the peace of the whole world, and now we prayed for good weather, and now for the deliverance of the captives.” It seems that everything that was read was translated, but this is a formal approach. With such a translation, it is impossible to enter into a state of prayer. The translator is obliged to translate the prayer itself, which is read by the priest or sung by the choir, and not just convey the general meaning.

It should be noted that the problems of modern church life, which may not be so noticeable in the parish, gape and cry out in the community of the deaf. And one of them is the problem of catechesis. If there are no meetings and catechism conversations with the deaf outside of liturgical time, then a deaf person can come to church for services with sign language translation for years, but not understand the main essence. That is why, before founding a community of the deaf at some church, holding services, it is necessary to organize meetings and catechism conversations, after which it is already possible to bring a person to the Liturgy.

It happened that one of the pious laymen or priests, driven by a desire to help spiritually, tried to organize services in sign language, but people did not go. The father is surprised: why is that so? The answer is simple: because no one told these people that they should come to the temple. Moreover, the deaf have a certain fear in relation to the hearing world, which can become aggravated in the temple - unfamiliar place, strict rules, etc. Therefore, before holding services, a deaf person needs to be explained why he should go there.

And attitude is very important. If a person feels that he is loved in the temple, that he is needed, that other parishioners are open to him, he will come first for the sake of a good attitude towards him, and then for the sake of God.

– Are there any specific features of preaching to the deaf, given that the deaf have more developed figurative thinking? For example, it is probably easier for them to convey information visually - with a picture than with text, how does everything happen in practice?

– Deaf people live in their own little world of communication with each other. When reading books, many things can be incomprehensible to them, especially prepositions: in, on, for, from under. They think in those concrete images that they see in front of them: a picture, a sofa, a clock. What is “from under the sofa” is already difficult to understand for a person who is deaf.

The main thing is to preach the gospel. The original Greek text in which it is written is very easy to understand and read. Any specialist in ancient Greek, who reads Plato and Aristotle in the original, will say about the Gospel that it is written very simply, without ornateness and philological intricacies. Therefore, it is necessary to explain to people the parables and speeches of Christ, using examples taken from the lives of the saints.

In preaching to the deaf, there is no need to use scientific theological terms: “catharsis”, “apokatastasis”, “Divine energy”. A good theological education to some extent can even interfere with preaching when a priest uses complex terms, participial phrases, metaphors, hyperbole, etc. To the deaf, all this may be incomprehensible.

– And what is the peculiarity of worship for the deaf from a purely technical point of view, what is needed to hold such a service?

– When the divine service is translated for the deaf, they pray in a separate place reserved for them, as close as possible to the salt, and stand next to the interpreter. It is necessary that the temple be well lit, with large windows. Deaf people perceive information not by hearing, but by sight. Bad sanctification is like a great noise to them, preventing them from hearing anything. The deaf person has to continuously look at the sign language interpreter for two or three hours, but if he turns away, he has already missed part of the prayer or did not catch the meaning.

Therefore, I dare to express the idea that it is not worth holding too long services (4-5 hours) - the eyes get tired, both the priest and the translator get tired physically “from translating by hands”. In this case, it is worth remembering the words of the Lord: “I want mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6, 6).

–Does it happen that the priest himself conducts a service for the deaf?

- Of course. If the priest simultaneously celebrates the Divine Liturgy with voice and gestures, then the royal doors are open, and prayers are pronounced not to the east, but to the west. In a similar way, I celebrate divine services in the Moscow church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God of the former Simonov Monastery.

For more than ten years my life has been connected with deaf people. During my third-year studies at the Tomsk Seminary, a group of deaf people came to our church for an excursion. I saw them and realized that they needed help. Along with other seminary students, I began to go to the deaf society club on Sundays and conduct classes like a Sunday school for adults.

– Is there evidence that some deaf and hard of hearing people are in sects?

- Unfortunately, this is so. One gets the impression that each sect considers it their sacred duty and obligation to convert the deaf "to their faith". Many followers of all kinds of false teachings specifically take courses in sign language, and then, in their own way, try to infiltrate the society of the deaf and attract them to their delusion.

– Thirteen million deaf people - a potential flock?

- More than. Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals of various kinds are very successful, and there are many deaf people in their organizations. The reasons for this are elementary. A deaf person is happy to make contact with a person who knows sign language, especially if he says something interesting about God, about the Bible, about future life in the sky. The thirst for communication is realized.

Imagine that you have arrived in Laos, neither the culture, nor the place, nor the people are familiar to you, and suddenly you meet a fellow countryman and can communicate with him in your native Russian language. Naturally, you will begin to communicate. And here is the same. Sectarians are well aware of the psychology of a deaf person.

–That is, your responsibility as a priest is great here?

—Everyone who expresses a desire to conduct worship services for the deaf must clearly understand that he assumes obligations to people. You can't hold one service and calm down. From time to time, news appears with approximately the same headline “a unique service for deaf people was held in our city for the first time.” Passed and forgotten. And such worship should not be unique. It is essential that the practice of holding divine services for the deaf becomes an everyday affair, organically woven into parish life.

If there are few deaf people in the city, then it is all the same, even for the sake of one it is worth preaching. Sometimes you ask the catechists or the priest: “How many deaf people come to your service?” And the priest says with timidity: "Well, eight." It seems that eight is very little, when 400 people are registered in the city branch of the All-Russian Society of the Deaf, but we are not chasing indicators. Even for the sake of one, it is worth holding services and preaching the word of God.

– Deaf and hard of hearing people are very sincere, emotional people, they often say that they have fulfilled the covenant “to be like children”, can you agree with this?

- Quite right. There is another point - the deaf can be very vulnerable. For example, if a hearing person is stepped on on a tram, he may think that this was done by accident. If the same happens to a deaf person, he will think that he was stepped on only because he is deaf.

Or if the hearing person came to the doctor and the doctor was rude, the hearing person will attribute this to the character of the doctor, and the deaf person will think that this happened because I cannot explain my symptoms of the disease to the doctor in a clear voice. Any remark made to a deaf person in church can be followed by the usual reaction: “I was offended because I am deaf.”

In order to avoid such situations, a full-fledged spiritual pastoral care for the deaf and hard of hearing is necessary. At the same time, the deaf should not be singled out as a separate special category of people. They are the same as other parishioners, they just need to know sign language to enlighten them.

At the same time, we hearing people may never be able to fully understand the worldview of a deaf person, even if we participate in actions or performances in support of the deaf all day long and walk with earplugs in our ears. At times it is difficult to understand all the subtleties of the spiritual dispensation of a hearing impaired person. This is important not to forget.

- One hearing-impaired acquaintance told me that he was even glad to lose part of his hearing - he does not hear much that he does not need. Is it possible to say that deaf people have fewer temptations, that they are purer people?

- It is possible that these words were spoken as a sign of consolation to himself. A person who does not have hands will not say: “It is good that I have no hands, I cannot commit a sin.” Hearing is a great blessing, through hearing new and pleasant sensations come to us: we are told good words, praised, interesting things are told. The deaf do not have this, and perhaps that is why they seek these feelings of euphoria and joy through alcohol and drugs.

Sin clings to a person regardless of disability. Therefore, I would not dare to assign high epithets of perfection to the deaf. The pastoral care of a deaf person does not differ from the care of a hearing person, but I repeat once again, the way to the heart of a deaf person lies through the priest's knowledge of the sign language and the love shown to the person.

– It is known that the world of the deaf and hard of hearing is very closed, the attitude towards the "speaking" is cautious.How do new deaf or hard-of-hearing parishioners come to the parish?

- In different ways: someone learned from friends, someone read on the Internet. For example, a deaf elderly woman came to the Epiphany Cathedral in Tomsk. She miraculously left the Jehovah's Witnesses and wanted to become an Orthodox Christian. But the already churched deaf people did not want to accept her, because “she is not ours”, “she is from Jehovah,” they said. This is the perception of the deaf.

Many deaf people, especially in the region, study at the same school, perhaps then work at the same factory, and so the choice of someone was made in favor of a certain group - Jehovah's Witnesses, which means "you are not ours." The division into one's own and another's among the deaf may be more fundamental than among the hearing.

By the way, if two deaf people meet in Moscow, they will always ask: “Which school did you go to?” It is enough for a person to name the number of the school in which he studied, and a lot is already known about him. After all, there are not many specialized schools, and thus a chain of mutual acquaintances is built.

– And what about the relations between the hearing priest, the parishioners and those who are not hearing? How can I approach a deaf person in a temple?

- You can write your questions, wishes on a piece of paper. The deaf, especially the young, always have a pen, paper or tablet with them. But if you want to communicate with a deaf person in his language, he himself can teach you. They respond very quickly and help those who wish in every possible way, they begin to actively communicate, they suggest: “You made a mistake here, here you need to use a different gesture.” It all depends on your inner desire and burning.

– Serving deaf people is sacrificial service. Maybe that's why the clergy who take care of the deaf are mostly monastics or celibates. This service really needs a lot of time. At the same time, preaching to the deaf is a great joy and a great responsibility.

I hope that our parish of the Church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God will grow stronger, and new communities of the deaf and hard of hearing will appear in other cities. In any case, we all strive for this.

Even in the deepest antiquity, people knew that death does not mean a complete end. Everyone knew that when a person dies, his body is buried in the earth, and his soul is preserved somewhere in other worlds. But the Church teaches us something else, tells us about another hope - "tea of ​​the resurrection of the dead." This means that the soul of a dead person does not have the fullness of life. The fullness of life for a person is in the unity of soul and body. The Lord Himself spoke about this more than once: “Those who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live!”

Those who are in the tombs are those who are in the graves. This means that not only souls, but also bodies will be resurrected. The Apostle Paul calls Christ the firstborn from the dead.

The Lord came out of the tomb not the same as He was before His death on the cross. His flesh became different, free from the laws of our world. “We will not all die, but we will all be changed,” says the apostle. And he continues: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption… a spiritual body is sown, a spiritual body is raised.” This means that the day will come when the whole world will be transformed, when all nature will bloom, everything that has died in it will come to life. “And I saw a new earth and a new heaven,” says the evangelist.

What the Lord has planned for the universe is great and beautiful. And now we are only in the distant anticipation of what will be done. We will all resurrect. So everyone will be revealed in their highest beauty. Each of us will open the whole universe. We will no longer be small, petty, earthbound mortals. The whole universe, all heavenly bodies, all worlds, all that is, will be revealed to us.

This means that we have the hope that the Truth of God and the Mind of God will reign in all creation. And this is our hope here, today, in our life, in our actions, in everything that God has offered us in our destiny. Today we are preparing for this future.

And so we pray every day to our Father, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” “Thy Kingdom come,” in which we trust, for “we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.”

Inconsolable and boundless should have been our sorrow for our dying loved ones, if the Lord had not given us eternal life. Our life would be meaningless if it ended with death. What is the use then of virtue, of good deeds? Then those who say are right: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die!” But man was created for immortality, and by His resurrection Christ opened the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal bliss, to those who believed in Him and lived righteously. Our earthly life is a preparation for the future, and that preparation ends with our death. “Man must die one day, then judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Then a person leaves all his earthly cares, the body disintegrates in order to rise again in the general resurrection. But his soul continues to live and never ceases to exist for a moment. By many appearances of the dead, it is given to us in part to know what happens to the soul when it leaves the body. When her vision with her bodily eyes ceases, then her spiritual vision opens. Often it begins in the dying even before death, and they, while still seeing those around them and even talking to them, see what others do not see. Having left the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually she tends to those who are more akin in spirit, and if, while in the body, she was under the influence of some, then she remains dependent on them, leaving the body, no matter how unpleasant they may be upon meeting.

For two days, the soul enjoys relative freedom, can visit places on earth that it loves, and on the third day it goes to other spaces. At the same time, she passes through hordes of evil spirits that block her path and accuse her of various sins, to which they themselves tempted her. According to the revelations, there are twenty such barriers, the so-called ordeals, on each of them one or another type of sin is tested; having passed through one, the soul enters the next, and only having safely passed through all, the soul can continue its journey, and not be immediately cast into hell. How terrible those demons and their trials are shown by the fact that the Theotokos Herself, informed by the Archangel Gabriel of her impending death, prayed to Her Son to deliver Her from those demons, and, fulfilling Her prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from Heaven to receive the soul of His Most Pure Mother and lift up to Heaven. The third day is terrible for the soul of the deceased, and therefore it then especially needs prayer for it. Having successfully passed the ordeals and bowed to God, the soul visits the Heavenly Villages and the abysses of hell for another thirty-seven days, not yet knowing where it will end up, and only on the fortieth day is its place determined until the resurrection of the dead. Some souls are in a state of anticipation of eternal joy and bliss, while others are in fear of eternal torment, which will fully come after the Last Judgment. Until then, changes in the state of souls are still possible, especially through the offering of the Bloodless Sacrifice for them (commemoration at the liturgy), as well as through other prayers.

How important is the commemoration at the liturgy, shows the following event. Before the opening of the relics of St. Theodosius of Chernigov (1896), the priest, who was reclothing the relics, tired, sitting near the relics, dozed off and saw the saint in front of him, who said to him: “Thank you for working for me. I also ask you, when you celebrate the Liturgy, remember my parents, ”and called their names (Priest Nikita and Maria). “How do you, saint, ask me for prayers when you yourself stand at the throne of heaven and give people the mercy of God ?!” the priest asked. “Yes, that’s true,” Saint Theodosius answered, “but the offering at the Liturgy is stronger than my prayer.” Therefore, memorial services are useful for the dead, and prayers at home for the dead, and good deeds done in their memory, such as almsgiving, sacrifices for the church, but commemoration at the Divine Liturgy is especially useful for them. There were many appearances of the departed and other events confirming how beneficial the commemoration of the departed is. Many who died with repentance, but did not have time to show it during their lifetime, were freed from torment and received repose. Prayers are always offered up in the church for the repose of the departed, and even on the day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in kneeling prayers at Vespers there is a special prayer "for those who are held in hell." Each of us, wishing to show our love for the dead and provide them with real help, can best do this through prayer for them, especially by commemorating them at the liturgy, when the particles taken out for the living and the dead are immersed in the Blood of the Lord with the words: “Wash Lord, the sins of those who are remembered here by Your precious Blood, by the prayers of Your saints. We can do nothing better and more for the departed than to pray for them, offering commemoration for them at the liturgy.

They always need this, and especially in those forty days in which the soul of the deceased makes its way to the Eternal Abodes. Then the body does not feel anything, does not see the gathered loved ones, does not smell the fragrance of flowers, does not hear funeral speeches. But the soul feels the prayers offered for it, is grateful to those who create them, and is spiritually close to them. Relatives and friends of the deceased! Do for them what they need and what you can! Spend money not on the external decorations of the coffin and grave, but on helping those in need, in memory of deceased loved ones, on churches where prayers are offered for them. Show mercy to the deceased, take care of his soul. We all have that path ahead of us; how we will wish then that they would remember us in prayer! Let us ourselves be merciful to the departed. As soon as someone passes away, immediately call or notify the priest to read the "Following the Exodus of the Soul", which is supposed to be read over all Orthodox immediately after their death. Try to ensure that, if possible, the funeral service takes place in the church and the Psalter is read over the deceased before the funeral service. The funeral service can be performed not magnificently, but always completely, without reduction; then think not about yourself and your comforts, but about the deceased, whom you say goodbye forever. If there are several dead in the church at the same time, do not refuse to have them buried together. It is better to let two or more dead people be buried at once, and the prayer of all their loved ones gathered will be even hotter, than they will be buried in turn and, not having the strength and time, will shorten the service, when every word of prayer for the deceased is like a drop of water to the thirsty. Be sure to immediately take care of the magpie, that is, the daily commemoration for 40 days at the liturgy. Usually, in churches where daily worship takes place, the dead buried there are commemorated for forty days or more. If they are buried in a church where there is no daily service, relatives should take care of themselves and order a magpie where there is a daily service. It is also good to send for remembrance to monasteries and to Jerusalem, where there is constant prayer at holy places. But you need to start the magpie immediately after death, when the soul especially needs prayer help, and therefore start the commemoration in the nearest place where the daily service is. Let us take care of those who go to the other world before us, so that we can do everything for them that we can, remembering that “Blessed are mercy, for they shall have mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Saint John (Maximovich)