Contact your parish priest immediately. This allows your assigned priest to visit the family and offer the last rights, which include the ministry of Holy Confession, Holy Communion, and prayer.
Do not contact a funeral home before calling your priest. Our priest will advise on the proper Orthodox burial traditions and ensure that the sacred rites are administered according to our faith.
Arrangements are made jointly with the priest and the funeral director. The priest is a vital part of the process, ensuring that every element of the service aligns with Orthodox liturgical practice.
A Trisagion (a service of solemn prayers and hymns) may be conducted at the Church either on the evening before or on the morning of the funeral.
The priest will deliver the liturgical sermon during the funeral service.
No funeral is permitted on Sundays, the day of the Resurrection of our Lord. Sundays are reserved for celebrating the new life in Christ.
The family is asked to provide certain items, which are integral to the service:
A small bottle of red wine
A small bottle of olive oil
Kolyva (plain boiled wheat as a symbol of the resurrection)
Savano (a white sheet used as a burial shroud in the casket)
Although nothing in the Orthodox tradition requires the faithful to donate their organs to others, never the less, this practice may be considered an act of love, and as such is encouraged. The decision to donate a duplicate organ, such as a kidney, while the donor is living, requires much consideration and should be made in consultation with medical professionals and one’s spiritual father. The donation of an organ from a deceased person is also an act of love that helps to make possible for the recipient a longer, fuller life. Such donations are acceptable if the deceased donor had willed such action, or if surviving relatives permit it providing that it was in harmony with the desires of the deceased. Such actions can be approved as an expression of love and if they express the self-determination of the donor. In all cases, respect for the body of the donor should be maintained.
Organ transplants should never be commercialized, coerced, take place without proper consent, nor place in jeopardy the life of the donor or recipient, such as the use of animal organs. Neither should the death of the donor be hastened in order to harvest organs for transplantation to another person.
To begin preparing for a Orthodox funeral at Holy Cross – St. Nektarios, please contact:
(705) 726-9875
StNektariosGOC@gmail.com
May the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ and the comfort of our Holy Trinity bring peace to your grieving hearts. With prayerful condolences and fatherly love, we stand with you in this sacred time.
