MEMORIAL SATURDAY

The penultimate Saturday on the eve of Lent is dedicated to the memory of the departed. This is the Saturday before the Sunday of the Last Judgment. In popular piety this day is called Parental Saturday, and in the liturgical language of the Church, the Memorial Saturday of Meatfare.

On Memorial Saturday, the Church prays for all Orthodox Christians who have departed from the beginning of the foundation of the Christian Church. “Christ, in order to lead us to God, once suffered for our sins, the righteous for the unjust, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, by which He went and preached to the spirits in prison,” writes Apostle Peter in his Epistle (1 Pet. 3:18-19). The dogma of Christ’s descent into hell is also confessed in the ancient Apostles’ Creed.

This means that God has His own special dispensation for all those who died before the Coming of Christ into the world. Therefore, the Church calls upon the Old Testament righteous in its prayers with a request for intercession but does not pray for the biblical departed. The same, for different theological reasons, applies to the gentiles who lived before the Coming of Christ. The Church does not call upon pagan righteous people in prayers.

The ancient Church knew the day of remembrance of all the faithfull departed on November 2 after the Feast of All Saints. This tradition has been preserved in Western Christianity. In Orthodoxy, the general commemoration of the dead is ultimately joined to the Lenten and Easter periods.

This commemoration is performed twice. In addition to the penultimate preparatory Saturday on the eve of Great Lent, the Great Remembrance takes place on the Saturday before Pentecost. On the second, third and fourth Saturdays of Great Lent, the charter allows for the commemoration of the dead. Usually, it is celebrated solemnly in parish churches and monasteries, but does not have an exceptional universal character, like the two main Memorial Saturdays.

It is generally accepted that the reason for the special commemoration of the faithfull departed on the eve of Great Lent and Pentecost is the practice of not serving the eucharistic liturgy on weekdays of Lent. Thus, according to this logic, the commemoration of the dead is, as it were, abolished. With the help of two exceptional memorial Saturdays, the Church, as it were, seeks to make up for this “missed” commemoration.

From an external, or, in philosophical language, phenomenological point of view, this opinion is perhaps correct. However, there is no formal prohibition to pray for the dead during Lent. Just as there is no prohibition on performing the Eucharistic Prayer. This is simply a practice that has developed over the centuries in Orthodoxy, which obviously must be considered.

In ancient times, monks spent the weekdays of Lent without food or drink and in complete solitude. There were no priests among the monks. Therefore, only on Saturdays and Sundays could monks attend the liturgy. But they could receive communion with Presanctified Gifts privately. None of these practices became widespread in popular piety.

But it was the desert ascetics who were the original authors of Great Lent in the form in which we still experience it in Orthodoxy. From the practice of the ascetics, as we have just described it, we see that there was no prohibition on the Eucharist or the commemoration of the living and the dead. But the structure of attending divine services and their character were determined by the specific forms of asceticism of these hermits.

The saints are endowed with special boldness, which allows them to remain in full prayer and action by the power of grace. The deceased await the resurrection. The tradition of constantly reading the psalter, performing alms and good deeds in the name and on behalf of the departed is a companion to the Lenten season.

According to the figurative expression of the Fathers of the Church, the deceased simply no longer have bodily arms and legs, and there is no voice to help themselves in in this way and in prayer. Now and until the end of history they will wait for the resurrection.