Skip to Navigation

New Booklet Presents Church's Teaching about Memorials

In the booklet, “Boiled Wheat Used for Holidays and Memorials in the Eastern Orthodox Church,” Archpriest Alexandros El-Far presents the Church’s essential teaching about the soul or spirit of each human being after death. After describing the meaning of the memorials traditionally kept on the third, ninth, and fortieth days as well as the half year and one year anniversaries after the death of an Orthodox Christian, Fr. Alexandros provides the reader with the patristic and scriptural foundations for understanding death as the doorway to eternal salvation.

Through excerpts from the lives of the martyrs, St. Theodore the Tyro (d. 297 A.D.) and his contemporary St. Barbara (d. 291), Fr. Alexandros tells the story of how wheat was established in the earliest Christian tradition as the symbol of death and resurrection. The booklet concludes with the Church’s admonition against cremation as a substitute for burial and an admonition against modern heretical ideas that can lead astray the Christian believer.

In a letter included as a forward to the booklet, Archbishop Joseph of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Diocese of Los Angeles and the West describes the work as “a perfect example of what we seek through our prayers to the departed.” May Fr Alexandros’ pastoral dedication to the Church for over 50 years deepen our understanding of wheat as the icon of dying for Christ’s sake and rising with Him.

 

Available in English or Arabic

Ordering Information

www.orthodoxiaradio.org

Email: orthodoxiaradio@kelfar.net

Or call Subdeacon Karim El-Far: 707-664-9892

Wholesale Discount Available