Memory Eternal: Funerals, Memorials, and Koliva

What you'll notice

You've been asked to come because someone you know has lost someone, and you're walking into a church you've never seen to grieve with people who do it differently. The first thing is the casket. In many Orthodox parishes it stands open in the middle of the nave, facing the altar, and the person you came to remember is right there, often with an icon or a small cross in their hands and a paper band across the forehead. Someone hands you a thin candle. The priest and chanters sing for most of the service; there's little speaking and a great deal of music, some of it achingly beautiful. Near the end, the family and then everyone else walk up to the casket, one by one, to say goodbye. And again and again you'll hear the same three words sung: "Memory eternal."

What it's called

The night before, at the funeral home or the church, there's usually a short service called the Trisagion for the departed, named for the "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal" it begins with. The funeral itself is the Order for the Burial of the Dead (Greek Akolouthia tou Nekrosimou). Where the body waits differs: Hapgood's rubric sets it in the porch "or in the Church, as is the custom in Russia."¹ The band on the forehead shows Christ, his Mother, and John the Baptist with the Trisagion: a victor's wreath.² The farewell at the end is the last kiss. A memorial service on later days is a mnemosyno (Greek, memorial service) or panikhida (Slavonic, memorial service). The dish of boiled, sweetened wheat is koliva (memorial wheat; Greek kollyva, Slavonic kutya).

What's actually happening

The Church is doing two things at once and refusing to choose between them. It's grieving honestly: the hymns of Saint John of Damascus at an Orthodox funeral don't pretend death is natural or pretty; they look straight at the body and weep. And it's proclaiming, over that same body, that Christ has trampled down death by death. The readings are Saint Paul, "that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope," and the Lord's promise that the dead will hear his voice.³ Psalm 119 (118 in the Septuagint) is chanted as the prayer of someone who loved God's law. Saint John Chrysostom asked his people what the torches and hymns at a Christian funeral were for, if not to thank God "that at last He has crowned the departed one": "All these are the acts of those rejoicing."⁴

The last kiss is the hardest and kindest part. In the old burial hymns the departed speaks for himself: "As ye behold me lie before you all speechless and bereft of breath, weep for me, O friends and brethren... come, all ye who loved me, and kiss me with the last kiss," and pray "without ceasing unto Christ our God" for me.⁵ People do. Then "Memory eternal" is sung three times. At the grave the priest strews earth on the body in the form of a cross, saying, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," and pours on oil from the lamp and ashes from the censer.⁶

"Memory eternal" is a prayer that God will remember the person, and to be remembered by God is to be alive.

The Liturgy itself remembers the dead from start to finish. At the preparation the priest sets out pieces of bread on the diskos for the living and the dead, and the names people hand in are read there.⁷ At the Great Entrance the clergy pray that "the Lord God remember in his kingdom" all Orthodox Christians.⁸ In the Anaphora the priest asks God to "call to remembrance all those who have fallen asleep in the hope of Resurrection unto life eternal."⁹ And after Communion he sweeps those pieces into the chalice, saying, "Wash away, O Lord, the sins of all who are here commemorated, by thy precious Blood, through the prayers of thy Saints."¹⁰ Father Thomas Hopko's summary: "In God's Kingdom nothing is forgotten," and the remembrances are "a form of living communion between heaven and earth."¹¹

Why it matters

The Orthodox funeral takes the body seriously, because the Church does. The body lying there was washed in baptism, anointed in chrismation, and fed with Christ's Body and Blood, and it will be raised. That's why people kiss the icon in the person's hands, and why the Church buries rather than cremates. The OCA's own answer puts it plainly, "According to Byzantine Canon Law, cremation is not permitted"; that's its summary of the tradition, since no canon in the main collections names cremation. In the Greek Archdiocese a church funeral is not held for someone who will be cremated. The same answer admits that "in extreme cases and for good cause, cremation has taken place with the knowledge of the Church," by economia, and adds, "This does not represent standard practice, however."¹² If cremation is on the table for someone you love, know the Church's answer before anything is decided.

Field Note: when a death is a suicide. Families sometimes fear the Church will refuse a funeral. For centuries the canons did withhold one, with an exception as old as Saint Timothy of Alexandria in the fourth century: the services may be offered when the person, "having no control of himself," took his own life.¹³ In 2007 the Orthodox bishops of the Americas (SCOBA) wrote a pastoral letter that takes that exception seriously. It says that "far more cases of suicide than have previously been recognized" involve a mind that wasn't fully free, and recommends that church burial and memorial services "could be granted unless there were an absence of significantly diminished capacities," with the priest consulting his bishop. It says plainly that "the state of the suicide victim is and must remain in the hands of God," and that the Church's attention belongs to "the living, the family and friends of the deceased."¹⁴ If this is your family's grief, the bishops have already said where the Church's attention belongs: with you. And if you're the one who's struggling right now, please tell someone today: a priest, a friend, a doctor, or a crisis line (988 in the United States).

Where it came from

Christians have buried their dead with hope since the beginning. The memorial days are old. The Apostolic Constitutions, around 380, keep the third day "with psalms, and lessons, and prayers" for the One who rose within three days, the ninth "in remembrance of the living, and of the departed," and the fortieth because "so did the people lament Moses," with alms for the poor and a yearly anniversary.¹⁵ The neater explanations you may hear (the Trinity for the third day, nine ranks of angels for the ninth, the Ascension for the fortieth) are later. Today many American parishes keep the fortieth day and the anniversary most faithfully.

The koliva carries the Lord's own image: "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). Wheat because the body is sown, sweet because of the life to come: that's how parishes explain it, and Hapgood's 1906 notes say the same, that the honey "typifies the sweetness of bliss of the future life."¹⁶ It's an explanation, not a rubric. Memorials, Blessings, and Announcements has more on the tray of wheat you'll see after a Sunday Liturgy.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: come to the Trisagion if you can, and to the funeral. Hold your candle, sing "Memory eternal," and go up for the last kiss: kiss the icon or cross in the departed's hands or bow, as your parish does. Arrange the fortieth-day and yearly memorials with the priest, give him the baptismal name, and keep the person's name in your prayers at every Liturgy. Bring food to the family. The meal after the funeral, the makaria (the funeral meal) in Greek parishes, is part of the comfort. The Church also keeps general memorial Saturdays: before Meatfare Sunday, the second through fourth Saturdays of Lent, and the Saturday before Pentecost; Slavic parishes add Radonitsa, the Tuesday after Thomas Sunday, and Demetrius Saturday in the fall, first kept after the battle of Kulikovo in 1380.

If you're visiting: stand when others stand, hold the candle you're given. When everyone goes up for the last kiss, you may go up and bow, or touch the casket, or simply stay in your place; all of these are fine. If koliva is offered, take some; eating it is part of the prayer. When you greet the family, "Memory eternal" or "May her memory be eternal" is the Orthodox thing to say, and "I'm so sorry" is never wrong. If you're unsure whether the casket will be open, or whether the family wants visitors at the graveside, ask the funeral home or the parish office.

Field Note: no eulogies? Many Orthodox funerals have no eulogy from family or friends during the service itself. The priest may give a short homily (the 1906 Russian service book marks no place even for that; it goes straight from the Gospel and the prayer for the departed to the last kiss),¹⁷ and the stories come at the meal afterward, where they belong. Policies on eulogies differ by parish and jurisdiction.

Go deeper

• John 11:1–44; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18; 1 Corinthians 15.
• Hapgood, Service Book, the Order for the Burial of the Dead, pp. 369–393.
• Alexander Schmemann, O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?
• Memorials, Blessings, and Announcements; What Happens After Death?

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