Панихида

The Church prays for her dead

A panikhida is the memorial service at which departed Christians are commemorated in prayer and, in hope of God's mercy, forgiveness of their sins and blessed eternal life are asked for them. It takes about twenty minutes.

Praying for the dead is not a peripheral custom in Orthodoxy. It rests on the conviction that the Church is one body, and that death does not remove anyone from it. Those who have died are not gone; they are asleep in Christ, and we go on praying for them exactly as we prayed for them while they were with us.

A vigil kept over the martyrs

The name is Greek — pannychis, "all-night singing" — and it is a literal description of where the service came from.

Under persecution, Christians could pray and offer the Bloodless Sacrifice without fear only at night and in hidden places. It was at night that they could take up the bodies of the martyrs and accompany them to their rest. They would sing psalms over the martyr through the whole night, reverently kiss the remains, and commit the body to the earth at daybreak. That all-night psalmody over the dead is what came to be called a panikhida.

What we serve now is that vigil, shortened. It is worth knowing when you stand through it: this is what the Church did for her martyrs, offered now for your own dead.

This is the earliest written witness to prayer for the departed, and the Church has never stopped. The Fathers are insistent that grief alone does not help anyone: the departed are helped by prayer, by almsgiving given in their memory, and above all by the offering of the Eucharist for them.

That last point deserves emphasis, because it reorders everything else on this page. The chief means by which the Church helps her departed is not the panikhida but the Divine Liturgy. The panikhida stands alongside it and does not replace it.

When a panikhida is served

Custom marks certain days, though a panikhida may be requested at any time:

• The third, ninth, and fortieth days after a death, and the anniversary each year afterwards.
• The memorial Saturdays — the Saturdays of the Souls, on which the whole Church prays for all the departed together, whether or not they were close to us. Two of them are universal: the Saturday before Meatfare and the Saturday before Pentecost. See the parish calendar for the year's full set.
• Radonitsa, the Tuesday of St. Thomas week — the ninth day after Pascha. The name comes from the word for joy: it is the day the Church brings the paschal greeting to the graves.
• Birthdays, namedays and family anniversaries, or simply when someone is remembered and wants to pray.

A panikhida may be served in the church, at home, or at the graveside. There is also a shorter form, the litiya — about five minutes — which is often what is served at the cemetery, and which a layperson may read when no priest can be brought.

A note about the cemetery

There is a widespread custom of bringing food and drink to the graves at Pascha and on Radonitsa, and leaving it there. It is worth saying that this is not a Christian practice — it descends from pre-Christian funeral feasts, and it sits badly with everything the Church actually believes about the dead.

Come with prayer instead. Say "Christ is Risen!" to your dead, read the paschal canon or the stichera of Pascha at the grave, have a litiya or a panikhida served. That is the joy the Church means to share with them.

What happens during the service

Psalms 50 and 90 are heard, then the troparia for the departed and a series of petitions in which the names are read. After the sixth ode comes the kontakion "With the saints give rest," which is the heart of the service, and the priest's prayer to "the God of spirits and of all flesh, who hast trampled down death and abolished the devil, and given life to Thy world." It concludes with "Memory eternal" — which is not a wish that we should remember them, but a prayer that God should.

Candles are lit and held during the service. A dish of kolyva — boiled wheat with honey, nuts and raisins — is placed on the memorial table with a candle in it, and blessed. The wheat is the image the Scriptures use for the resurrection: a grain must fall into the earth and die before it rises and bears fruit. The candle is the unfading light of eternal life.

The kolyva is eaten afterwards, and everything set on that table is meant as almsgiving offered in memory of the departed — which is one of the three things the Fathers say actually helps them.

Submitting names

Send the baptismal names of the departed, one per line, given name only. There is no limit to how many may be commemorated, and names may be resubmitted year after year.

Those commemorated by name at a panikhida are the Orthodox departed. This is not a judgment on anyone's eternal state — that belongs to God alone — but a matter of what the Church's liturgical commemoration is and says.

It is emphatically not a rule that you may not pray for everyone you love. The Church's own tradition provides for exactly this: those who are not commemorated at the altar are prayed for at home, and there are appointed prayers for the departed who died outside the Church, and even for those who took their own lives — the elders of Optina gave their blessing for such prayer. If this touches your family, speak with the priest. He would much rather you asked than quietly concluded there was nothing to be done.

You may also wish to have the departed commemorated at the Proskomedia during the Divine Liturgy, which is a distinct and especially powerful commemoration — see the commemoration names page.

A word on grief

People often hesitate to ask for a panikhida because they feel they should be past their grief by now, or because the death was long ago, or because the relationship was complicated. None of that is an obstacle. The Church does not set a term on mourning, and the panikhida is not a performance of composure. It is simply the place where love for someone who has died is given something to do.

If you have lost someone recently, tell the parish office. Beyond the panikhida there is the funeral service itself, the fortieth-day commemoration, and the ordinary human help of a parish — and the clergy would rather know.