"Our beloved souls of the whole world, who have moved high, we pray for you !!!"
"God has you in his arms and we have you in our hearts"
The first psychosabbath for 2018…
It is today (February 10) while the second is on May 26, 2018. Father Anastasios Isaac answers our questions about psychosabbaths.
What are psychosabbaths, what are the benefits of sleeping and what is our church doing today?
"Psychosabbaths are the Saturdays that precede the Sundays of Lent and Pentecost and are dedicated to the memory of our brothers who have fallen asleep for centuries. The memorial services that are held then and whenever the Christians ask for it, are essentially wishes for the rest of the deceased. In the old days, memorial services were simple and consisted of a wish. Their existence is due to the pious care and the need for prayers "For the eternal rest of souls."
Today we are all familiar with an abbreviation of the extensive sequence, namely the memorial prayer or the so-called Trisagion which includes in addition to "Holy God", the troparions "After spirits", the consistent and the wish "The God of spirits" ».
St. Chrysostom advises Christians to make memorials as well as charitable deeds in the memory of the bereaved because they benefit so that: if the bereaved is a sinner, he can be freed from his sins and, if he is righteous, receive a greater reward and return.
On the eve of Psychosabbath, that is, on Friday afternoon, but also on the Sabbath, the devout Christians come to the churches and present the names of their beloved loved ones. The names are usually written on a piece of paper called the "memorandum paper" and are accompanied by a hut or a suitable one. There the pastors read the names of those who fell asleep in the context of the trisagion. The same is repeated the next morning during the sacred offering, where they mention the names again, taking out portions of the offered bread (offered) in favor of the deceased, in the holy discus next to the offered lamb, for the performance of the Divine Eucharist.
As far as the huts are concerned, wheat symbolizes death, burial and resurrection with eternal life, as by sowing it falls to the ground it rots and "dies" but from this death a new life sprouts ".
What is the reason that our Church has established them, even though every Saturday is dedicated to our dead?
"Indeed, according to our ecclesiastical tradition, Saturdays are dedicated to the bereaved. Just as Holy Saturday is the epitaph of our Lord, so every Saturday is a prelude to the Resurrection. This is understandable if one studies the rules of the orthros and the other hymns recorded in the liturgical book of the Intercession and which concern the Sabbath. The purpose of the memorials and Psychosabbaths, including those mentioned, is to receive charity from God in order to participate in the Resurrection expected by all of us.
Saint Theophanes the Enclosed writes that our prayers for the bereaved are a manifestation of Christian love and as until the final judgment (in the common Resurrection) the hell of a soul is not definitively determined we cannot consider anyone completely doomed. Therefore, in the hope of God's infinite mercy, we pray that he will have mercy on even those who are ungodly. These two Psychosabbaths, and especially today, remind us of the crisis during the second presence (Sunday of Lent). On this Saturday, we especially need to feel the souls of those who have fallen asleep closer to us as they are all commemorated at the same time in all its Orthodox churches and the expression of love is not limited to our loved ones and relatives but to all Orthodox Christians who have fallen asleep for centuries.
Those who have no one to commemorate them, are only the psychosabbaths mentioned?
"Especially the psychosabbaths, we commemorate" for the blessed memory and eternal rest of all the centuries-old Orthodox Christians, kings, patriarchs, high priests, priests, priests, monks, monks, monks, parents, forefathers, ancestors. " Keep in mind that priests in every Divine Liturgy commemorate both the persons who are revered by the pious parishioners and the names of all those devout Christians who only know the names, both in the presentation and immediately after the consecration of the honorable gifts. God".
Many claim that souls, when approaching Holy Saturday, return to their own and many were the ones who saw their dead, either in their dream or in their awakening. What does our church believe?
"What our tradition supports is that the righteous soul after its departure from the body is received by an angel while the sinner is seized by a demon. The righteous are the forerunners of Paradise, and the sinners are the helpers of hell. But the judgment is partial because souls must be judged by the new bodies after the common Resurrection and because we will all be judged together in the presence of the Second Coming, where the Lord "will give each one according to his works." The souls of the Saints of our church and of the righteous are depicted by God and appear to the faithful in a miraculous way for benefit. Many miracles have been recorded concerning miraculous appearances of either Angels or Saints. But especially for appearances in dreams or visions of our own people, we must be very cautious and careful. We need to know that the wicked often appear in our eyes to seduce us, as an angel of light. That is why we must not give faith to dreams, even if they come true.
On the occasion of the day of Psychosabbath and the Sunday of the Crisis (I omit) that follows it…
We can put our lives back together and along with the prayers for those who have fallen asleep, we can pray for ourselves and for the living. In our prayers, we ask God to rest our beloved ones who have fallen asleep in the land of the living, and to give us alive the opportunity to repent, to avoid sin, to change our lives for the better, and to return to Paradise. ”
Source: ant1iwo.com