One can be prayed out of hell
15th March is the first Memorial Saturday of Great Lent. Do we understand the essence and meaning of our prayers for the reposed? Do we know how important these prayers are?
I personally had to experience, through the example of our family, what it means to pray together for the deceased. After my grandmother passed away, she began to appear in the dreams of relatives in a very distressed state, asking for help and support. We organised ourselves and began to pray simultaneously for her repose every day for forty days, each in our own home.
Time passed, and she appeared in a dream to her daughter. When asked how things were, my grandmother replied, "At first, it was very bad, dark, cold, scary, and drowsily, but now it is very good."
We are not ascetics, saints, or great men of prayer. We are ordibnary, sinful people, without any hint of anything special. And we prayed most simply, reading prayers from the prayer book, and I served the Litia – just as usual. But, as some would say today, "it works". And all of us need to know this! God hears even us – common, sinful, imperfect people, very far from true holiness. And not only does He hear, but He also accepts our prayers, shows mercy and forgiveness. Of course, hundreds of such stories can be read today, but there is a difference between reading them and having one's own experience.
If only we knew and understood how important our prayers are for the deceased, we wouldn’t only remember them on Memorial Days.
Every day we feed ourselves and our children in order to live. To fail to pray for our relatives is like not giving them food, leaving them hungry.
In the life of Elder Charalampos of Dionysiou, a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, there was an incident. One day, a brother from the monastery became tormented by thoughts of doubt. He thought, "We spend whole nights praying, serving, fasting, and so on. This is certainly good for us, but who else benefits from it?" With these thoughts, he went to sleep. The next day, the brother went to Elder Charalampos to confess these thoughts, but the Elder preempted him with a story.
In great agitation, Father Charalampos began to speak, saying that God had given him a frightening vision that day. "When I was standing in prayer," the Elder said, "at one moment, I was shown that I was in a huge dining hall. There were some doors, more like church gates, right in front of me. A large crowd had gathered in the dining hall. People were standing patiently, as if waiting their turn to come to me. I was like the chief breadgiver, and you were with me, cutting large loaves that looked like prosphora and handing them to me. The people gathered in the dining hall were arranged in two lines. One line was for the reposed and the other – for the living. To each person who came up, I gave a piece of bread for blessing. Joyfully, they moved aside. I noticed that all those who were recorded in our commemoration book were there."
The monk understood that this vision was given to him through the Elder. When he confessed the doubts that troubled him, the Elder told him a story about his spiritual teacher, Elder Joseph the Hesychast.
In the world, Father Joseph had a cousin. Her spiritual life had not turned out well, but the Elder loved her. She died in a very bad way – grimacing, twisting, and speaking very harsh words. She died in this terrible state. The Elder wept for her.
"I thought," Father Charalampos said, "that he was grieving over her death. But the Elder, knowing my thoughts, said: 'I weep not because she died, but because she went to hell to suffer.' Nonetheless, the Elder imposed a strict fast on himself and began to pray for her with prayer beads. And one day, Father Charalampos saw the Elder Joseph glowing with joy."
"What happened, Geronda (Father)?"
"I will tell you, my child," the Elder replied. "All these days I prayed incessantly, keeping vigil, fasting, and weeping for my cousin. And today, I was granted a joyful and amazing vision. During my prayer, I saw my cousin alive. With great joy, she told me that today was the day of her deliverance. 'I am freed from torment and going to heaven,' she said. But that’s not all. Then, Blessed Father George appeared before me. He is the father of holy life, who had a strong desire to free sinners from hell. Every day, he served the liturgy and commemorated thousands of names. He often went to cemeteries to serve litias and panikhidas (memorial services) for the departed. So, when he appeared to me, he said: 'I never knew, I never knew… until now, I thought that the departed could only be helped through commemoration in Divine liturgies and panikhidas. But now I see that they can be saved through prayer beads!' Through this vision, I was certain that my cousin had been saved, but God also showed me the power of prayer beads, which can free a soul from hell."
In these spiritual teachings, there is also practical benefit for us.
"How should we pray for the reposed to bring them benefit?" The Elder gives practical advice – use the prayer beads. A hundred Jesus Prayers: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, grant rest to the soul of Your servant (name)" will take no more than fifteen minutes. And during the first forty days after death, one could read up to a thousand – this would take no more than an hour and a half, which is not much for the salvation of a loved one’s soul.
Father Charalampos also spoke of the benefit of such work. "Praying with prayer beads for a brother, a relative, or others can free their soul from hell – that is the power of prayer," he taught his disciples. The Elder himself had confirmed this through experience, praying with prayer beads for his grandfather. Appearing in a dream, his grandfather kissed him and said, "Thank you, my child. I am now in a better place." Soon, the Elder saw his grandmother in a dream. She kissed his hand and said, "My child, pray for me too, so that I may go where your grandfather is now." "I saw them completely alive, even though I knew they had died," the Elder said.
But how rarely today can we hear a question about what to read for the deceased and how to pray properly. More often, people ask when to remove towels from mirrors, when to wash the floor, or whether the apartment needs to be blessed after the deceased has passed. And, of course, "sealing"... I fear that many people, even priests, invite a priest for a funeral not to help the reposed pass through the valley of death, but so that the deceased won’t come back. The "sealing" is, as it were, the fixation of the irreversibility of the process and the statement of the fact of finality.
We have become worse than Neanderthals and Stone Age people. They not only believed in the afterlife of their deceased ancestors but also visibly included them in their home councils, calling upon them with prayers for help. For this purpose, they had a special area in their earthen round houses where the skulls of the reposed were kept. Often, they were modelled in plaster to make the features of the deceased more visible. The souls of the dead were not terrifying; they were the protectors of the family. But for some modern Christians, the most important thing is to "seal". Yet, everything that happens during a funeral is deeply symbolic. "The earth is the Lord’s, and all that fills it, the universe and everything in it…," the priest says while sprinkling earth on the grave.
Therefore, for the soul of the reposed to benefit, effort and prayer are needed. And the deeper the soul has sunk into the abyss of hell, the harder and longer this effort must be. Of course, we cannot know what God’s judgment is on the other side of the grave, but we have the right to make assumptions based on the person’s life. At the same time, we must understand that there is a depth of hell so deep that our prayers can no longer reach.
It is better to leave this, entrusting everything to God’s providence. Even the great saints could not allow themselves to do what we should not even dare to dream of.
Here is the testimony of an elder of whom St Joseph the Hesychast, after a revelation given to him by the Holy Spirit, said: "My child, you have not only spiritual purity but also spotless innocence." Elder Ephraim of Katounakia fervently prayed for his cousin Anna, who had become involved with magic in her earthly life. Father Ephraim cried out: "Lord Jesus Christ, for the sake of the Blood You shed on the Cross, have mercy on this soul." But the Lord Himself stopped him. "For such boldness," the Elder recalled, "I got a good slap, completely intended for me. God endures everything, but stay as far away from magic as possible!… Something similar happened again, and I incurred God’s wrath, but I realised my mistake, asked for forgiveness, and avoided punishment. Fear and terror all of it."
Here is an excerpt from his letter to his spiritual brother Charalampos:
"In this letter, I want to share some details about our late Nondas. For the first time in my life, I prayed for this soul as I did the day before yesterday, on the eve of the Ascension. With all the strength of my soul, I wept, sobbed, and cried out to God for him. But the most important thing is not this, but that I understood that God heard me. It was as if God said to me: 'Speak, and I am listening.' And before? I simply could not pray for him. What did he do? I do not know. But it was as though I saw an iron door locked with a bolt, and when I tried to open it, I encountered an angry, furious God, ready to strike me. I immediately withdrew and said, 'Forgive me, I have sinned, I have been wrong, I ask for forgiveness.' I once received such a rebuke when I prayed for Anna, and after that experience, I could no longer pray for Nondas”…
But of course, this is an exception to the general rule. Elders Ephraim and Charalampos, serving the liturgy daily, would remember hundreds of names during the proskomedia and instructed their disciples to do the same, setting the example of Father Nicholas (Planas) (1851–1932), who was canonised by the Church of Greece in 1992. The whole life of this simple, poorly educated priest was one continuous liturgy. Time and again, the elders taught their disciples about the necessity and importance of remembering Christians during the proskomedia and the liturgy, dedicating a significant portion of the service to this.
Coming to the liturgy much earlier, these elders would sometimes spend hours removing particles from the prosphora for the health and repose of the departed. Their death bills were written with thousands of names.
Of course, it would be good to live a life in such a way that we needn’t worry about whether prayers will be said for us later or not and the soul’s fate would already be blessed and radiant. Unfortunately, not everyone manages to live such a life. Therefore, being connected to our deceased ancestors through the communications of love and memory, we are obliged to do everything in our power to give them the nourishment of prayer and intercession before God.
