Different Days, Different Forms, and the Question of Cremation

The burial service is not one text. The books give a separate order for a priest, longer and with additional readings; a separate order for a monastic; and a distinct order for a child, which drops the petitions for forgiveness of sins on the grounds that they are not needed and asks instead for consolation for the parents. The differences are small in length and large in what they say about who is being buried.

The sharpest variation is seasonal. During Bright Week, the week following Pascha, the funeral is largely replaced by the paschal service: the mournful hymns give way to the Easter canon, and the burial is sung as a resurrection service. A tradition that is willing to describe a corpse in detail is equally willing to suspend the description for a week of the year, which is a good illustration of how the two moods sit together rather than competing.

The rite continues past the burial in the memorial service, the panikhida, kept on the third, ninth and fortieth days, at anniversaries, and on the appointed Saturdays of Souls. Cremation is a live question. The Orthodox churches have generally not permitted it, on the grounds of the body's dignity and the resurrection, and several jurisdictions maintain that position strictly, while others have made pastoral provision where civil law or cost leaves a family no choice. This atlas records the general position and the variation between jurisdictions rather than presenting either as settled.