Memorial Saturdays in March. Parents' Saturday

Trying to find out what date Parents' Day is in the coming 2017, we invariably show a desire to pay honors to deceased relatives and friends. It is so important to pay tribute to their memory and respect. This helps maintain the connection between generations and is prerequisite spiritual life. Very little is required of us - to know when these days will be celebrated, only in this case can we adequately prepare for them.

What is Radonitsa?

Called Radonitsa or sometimes Radunitsa, this day is one of the special holidays set aside by the church to honor the dead. Such special days (there are 8 of them in a year) are celebrated on Saturdays, which is where their name comes from - “parental Saturdays”.

However, Radonitsa stands apart in the series of these memorable days, since for the most part it almost always falls on a Tuesday. The peculiarity of this most important parent's day of the year is not only that it is celebrated on Tuesday, but also that in terms of its significance it ranks first among all memorial days.

There is no exact date assigned to Radonitsa; every year the time of this day changes depending on when Easter is celebrated. Wanting to find out what date parent’s day is in 2017, you just need to count 9 days from Bright Day Christ's Sunday and we actually get the exact date Radonitsy. That is, in other words, this is the first Tuesday after Krasnaya Gorka (Fomina Sunday). Thus, the date of parent's day in 2017 falls on April 25.

Memorial days

In order to be able to timely honor the memory of deceased relatives and friends, taking care of their souls by reading prayers and visiting the cemetery in order to maintain order at the graves, you simply need to know exact days commemoration. Orthodox parenting days in 2017 fall on the following dates:

Now that you know the parents’ days to visit the cemetery in 2017, you will be able to properly prepare and arrange a memorial rite worthy of your deceased relatives and friends.

Origins and meaning of Radonitsa

According to the testimony of many scientists and biblical figures, including John Chrysostom, the history of Radonitsa goes back to ancient times. Back in pagan times it was great holiday remembrance of the deceased, carried out on a wide scale. On this day, people gathered at the burial mounds, held a funeral feast and noisy celebrations, trying to appease the souls of the deceased. This holiday is ingrained in the popular consciousness so deeply that official church after a long time, she recognized this day, elevating it to a special rank.

The meaning of this holiday is hidden in its name, which varies from person to person. Slavic peoples may sound different. These are Radovnitsa (some regions of Russia), and Mogilki, and Grobki (Ukraine), and Naviy Den (Belarus).

The joy of resurrection on special days

However, in any case, “Radonitsa” in its origin is equated to both the word “joy” and the concept of “kindred”. What kind of joy can we talk about on such a mournful day? The Church explains: when visiting the temple and graves of our ancestors on Radonitsa, we should not fall into despondency and melancholy, but rejoice for loved ones who appeared before the face of the Lord. They are now close to God and their souls rejoice, being in love and happiness.

So, why shouldn’t we, their descendants, rejoice for them by offering prayers? By tidying up the grave, we also perform a certain ritual action, symbolically meaning preparation for the resurrection of the soul.

The main thing that we must and can do on this day for deceased relatives is to devote sufficient time to prayers. If it is not possible to invite a priest to the grave to read the litiya (funeral prayer service), then you can do it yourself. It is prayers that our family and friends need, and not excessive eating and drinking of alcohol. This is what the Church teaches, and this is how you need to act according to your conscience and the dictates of your heart.

Procedure and basic rules

In the morning of any Mother's Day, Orthodox Christians go to church, taking with them a Lenten lunch, which is donated either to the church or to poor people who are in dire need of help. After holding the funeral service, they usually go to cemeteries, where they also read prayers and clean up. Traditions such as commemorating food and drinking directly at graves are still very strong. Traditionally, this can be understood, but the church is against such actions. In principle, everyone acts according to their own concepts, but still, organizing a drunken feast at graves is not a godly thing.

Radonitsa in Rus'

By the way, in Rus', towels and tablecloths were laid out on Radonitsa right on the grave mound, and, having laid out a rich meal, the whole family enjoyed the meal. We ate and drank so much that sometimes we immediately fell asleep. The list of obligatory dishes included those painted yellow or green color eggs, dry pies according to a special recipe, pancakes, porridge.

Before the start of the funeral feast, the head of the family rolled eggs along the grave and then buried one of them in the ground, as if allowing the deceased to join the Easter meal. It was obligatory to pour a glass of vodka on the grave, which is also not welcome modern church. After dinner, to which the beggars were always invited and treated, they remained in the cemetery for a short time, peacefully spending time in conversations, and only then went home. In the evening, the youth organized festivities with songs, dances and fun activities.

Signs and beliefs for parent's day

among the people great importance attached importance to the weather that fell on Radunitsa. We were especially looking forward to the rain.

• It was believed that the rain on this day had a special power - to preserve and prolong youth and health, beauty, prosperity, and happiness. Small children sang special songs to invite rain. If it really rained, they washed themselves with its water, exposing their face to the rain. And the girls did this in a special way, passing rainwater through a gold or silver ring in order to be beautiful and happy.
• The rain foreshadowed a year rich in harvest.
• It was strictly forbidden to plant or sow anything on this day - this led to the possibility of losing the entire harvest.
• If it stood on Radonitsa warm weather, they said, “the parents breathed in warmth.”

By deepening your knowledge about parent's day, we will be able to take a different look at the meaning of this holiday of remembrance. And showing correct example to our children, we can hope that this tradition will be passed on further, uniting the representatives of the clan into a single whole.

Nika Kravchuk

Parents' Saturdays 2017: don't forget to remember the departed

Did you know that our deceased relatives and friends need prayers even more than the living? You can pray for them both in home prayer and in church prayer. The church even established special days commemoration. In this article we will tell you what days parental Saturdays fall on in 2017 and how to properly remember the dead. Hurry up to find out, because the first Parents' Saturday is already February 18th.

Why should we pray for the dead?

Christianity is called the religion of life. And this is no coincidence. Both Orthodox and Catholics, and many Protestants believe that after physical death they continue to exist, because man is eternal.

Therefore, the Church prays both for health and for repose. It is believed that after bodily death the fate of a person is determined - where he will await the second coming of Christ and the Last Judgment. Some will go to heaven, others to hell.

But this is not a final decision yet. Every sinner has a chance that before the Last Judgment his posthumous fate will change. All this is thanks to the prayers of the living: family, loved ones, friends.

That is why believers do not forget their relatives, even if they are in another world. They pray for the dead both at home and in church.

Parents' Saturdays are days of special church remembrance

IN morning rule There is a prayer to the Lord with a request to give peace to our parents, relatives, benefactors and all Orthodox Christians.
In churches, separate services are held - memorial services, during which they pray only for repose. There are even certain days— parental Saturdays, on which the Church calls on all believers to pray for those who are temporarily not with us.

True, in an Orthodox church you can submit notes only for those baptized in Orthodoxy who died a natural death. The Church does not remember the unbaptized, people of other faiths, or suicides, since even in earthly life they were not members of the Church of Christ and did not strive to be with God.

Every Saturday at Orthodox churches memorial services are held (and more often in monasteries), but only eight days a year have a special status - this is memorial Saturdays.

On what days in 2017 does the Russian Orthodox Church commemorate the dead?

Parents' Saturdays 2017 fall on the following days:

1. Ecumenical Parents' Saturday (Meat and Meat Saturday) - February 18, 2017.
2. Saturday of the second week of Great Lent - March 11.
3. Saturday of the third week - March 18.
4. Saturday of the fourth week - March 25.
5. Commemoration of deceased soldiers - May 9.
6. Radonitsa - April 25.
7. Trinity Ecumenical Parents' Saturday - June 3.
8. Dmitrievskaya Parents' Saturday - November 4th.

Why are memorial Saturdays called parental Saturdays?

In the calendar above, the two parental Saturdays of 2017 are called “universal.” This means that these days Orthodox Churches all over the world commemorate the departed.

Why are memorial Saturdays called parental Saturdays? Is it really only for parents that they pray for these days? No, the Church commemorates all deceased Orthodox Christians, but first of all, our relatives. Praying for the parents who gave us life is the duty of every Christian. And if our fathers and mothers have passed into eternity, then we are all the more obliged to remember them, thereby expressing our love and care.

In addition, parents should be understood not only as fathers and mothers, but also as other relatives—grandfathers, grandmothers, great-grandfathers, and so on.

In this sense, parental Saturdays are an opportunity, first of all, to pray for our family, for the people with whom we are related by blood. And only then - for friends, benefactors and all Orthodox Christians in general.

How to prepare for a memorial?

The first parents' Saturday of 2017 falls on February 18, nine days before the start of Lent. It is also called meat eating - on this day and the next Sunday you can still eat meat. Maslenitsa begins on Monday February 20, 2017.

Commemoration of the dead begins on Friday. In Orthodox churches they serve not just the All-Night Vigil, but the funeral all-night vigil - parastas . On Saturday morning, the Divine Liturgy is celebrated, and then a memorial service.

At a memorial service, notes with the names of the deceased, as well as food and food items are usually served.

Why is this so? It is believed that best help for the deceased - this is prayer and alms. Our personal petitions and notes for the memorial service are prayer, and the brought food, which after consecration is distributed to the needy and to those serving in the church, is alms.

There is no specific list of what to bring to a funeral service or a specific “norm.” Whoever can do as much as possible is the main rule. Bread, sugar, flour, canned food, sweets, vegetables, fruits - the list goes on. The only prohibition is meat, which cannot be brought into the temple.

Also in churches on memorial Saturdays they prepare kolivo - a ritual dish in the form of wheat or rice with honey. Interestingly, the grain symbolizes the earthly and eternal life of a person. In order for a grain to germinate and produce a harvest, it must first be planted in the ground. So that a person is born for eternal life, he must first die and be interred. Honey symbolizes the sweetness of the Kingdom of Heaven.

These external paraphernalia - both food for the funeral service and food - are important, but they should not distract a person from the main thing - prayer. The latter should not be assigned only to priests. Our prayer from a sincere loving heart is no less important.

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Dimitrievskaya Parents' Saturday is the closest Saturday before the day of remembrance of St. Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki (October 26 / November 8). For preferential commemoration to us personally dear people There are other parental Saturdays, including Dimitrievskaya Parental Saturday, which was originally intended to commemorate the soldiers who fell in the Battle of Kulikovo, but gradually became a general memorial day.

Parents Saturday, what is it?

Parents' Saturday- V Orthodox tradition day special commemoration deceased Orthodox Christians, and above all their deceased parents. Canonical days for visiting the graves of ancestors and other relatives, where memorial services are held. The days of special remembrance of the dead in the Orthodox Church are five parental Saturdays: Meat-free universal parental Saturday (Saturday 2 weeks before Lent); Trinity Ecumenical Parental Saturday (Saturday before the Holy Trinity, on the 49th day after Easter); parents' 2nd Saturday of Great Lent; parents' 3rd Saturday of Great Lent; parents' 4th Saturday of Great Lent.

Big Parents' Saturday in October 2017: when will it be

Dimitrievskaya Parents' Saturday in 2017 falls not in November, as is usually the case, but at the very end of October. In 2017, Parents' Saturday was moved to October 28 due to the coincidence with the holiday of the Kazan Icon Mother of God(November 4).

Remembrance Day on Saturday on the eve of the day of remembrance of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica (November 8, new style) was established after the bloody battle on the Kulikovo Field, which took place on Christmas Day Holy Mother of God in 1380. First, on this day they prayed for the repose of those at the cost of whose lives the victory was won. Over time, Dimitrievskaya Saturday became the day when all Christians “dead from time immemorial (from the beginning of time)” are remembered.

As on other parental Saturdays, the funeral Liturgy and memorial service are celebrated in the morning. The night before, the Great Requiem Service - Parastas - is celebrated. The translation of this word from Greek - “anticipation”, “intercession” - reflects the meaning and significance of parental Saturdays for believers. People whose earthly journey has ended can no longer correct their mistakes and repent of their sins, but the living can ask the Lord for mercy for them. Every day Christians pray for their deceased loved ones, and 7 times a year the entire Russian Orthodox Church turns to God, interceding for all its deceased children.

When is the next Dmitrievskaya Parents' Saturday?

Dimitrievskaya Saturday is the last parents' Saturday in 2017. Next Parents' Saturday is February 10, 2018.

Big Parents' Saturday in October 2017: what not to do

On this day it is forbidden to scold the deceased. You should remember only good things about them, otherwise you may anger their soul.

Also, during remembrance, you should not laugh or sing songs. Despite the fact that the holiday is not of a mourning nature, do not forget that on this day you remember loved ones who are no longer among the living. Therefore, fun will be inappropriate.

Big Parents' Saturday in October 2017: what to do on Parents' Saturday

Parents' Saturdays are days of special remembrance of the dead, when with our prayers we can provide great help to our family and friends who have passed on from earthly life. Five of them are reserved for commemorating deceased relatives, two more and the memorial services performed at the same time are called ecumenical. Parental Saturdays require observance certain rules which all believers should know.

On Demetrius Saturday, as on other memorial Saturdays, they visit the temple, where funeral services and memorial services are held, light a candle and pray. As on many parental Saturdays, on this one it is customary to help the poor and needy. It is believed that Dmitrievskaya Saturday is the time when winter replaces autumn, so you need to finish all preparations for frost before this day. Traditionally, on the eve of Saturday, people go to the bathhouse. It was believed that if someone had not gotten married before this day, they would not get married this year, since severe frosts were coming. And if it’s cold and snowing on Dmitry, spring will be late and cold, but if there’s a thaw, spring will be warm.

It is believed that Dmitrievskaya Saturday is the time when winter replaces autumn, so you need to finish all preparations for frost before this day. Traditionally, on the eve of Saturday, people go to the bathhouse. It was believed that if someone had not gotten married before this day, they would not get married this year, since severe frosts were coming. And if it’s cold and snowing on Dmitry, spring will be late and cold, but if there’s a thaw, spring will be warm.

According to ancient custom, on parental Saturdays it was customary to eat kutya - an obligatory dish for the funeral meal. Sweet porridge was usually prepared from whole grains of wheat or other cereals with the addition of honey, as well as raisins or nuts. True, today few people follow it.

During the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of Great Lent, special, intense commemoration of the departed is performed in churches. These days are called parental Saturdays.

Often these special days of remembrance of the dead are called “ecumenical parental Saturdays.” This is not true. There are two Ecumenical Memorial Saturdays: Meat (on the Saturday preceding the Sunday of the Last Judgment) and Trinity (on the Saturday preceding the Feast of Pentecost, or also called the Feast of Holy Trinity- the birthday of the Church of Christ).

The main meaning of these “universal” (common to all Orthodox Church) funeral services - in prayer for all deceased Orthodox Christians, regardless of their personal closeness to us. This is a matter of love that does not divide the world into friends and strangers. The main attention these days is to all those who are united with us by the highest kinship - kinship in Christ, and especially to those who have no one to remember.

For the primary commemoration of people dear to us personally, there are other parental Saturdays. First of all, these are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Saturdays of Great Lent, and besides them, the Dimitrievsky parental Saturday established in the Russian Orthodox Church, which was originally intended to commemorate the soldiers who fell in the Battle of Kulikovo, but gradually became a general memorial day .

This memorial service falls on the Saturday preceding the memory of the Great Martyr. Demetrius of Thessalonica - patron saint of the prince. Dmitry Donskoy, at whose suggestion, after the Battle of Kulikovo, an annual commemoration of soldiers was established. But over time, the memory of the liberating soldiers was supplanted in the popular consciousness, which is very regrettable, turning Dimitrievskaya Memorial Saturday into one of the “parents’ days.”

Parents' Saturdays in 2017 fall on the following dates:

• Ecumenical Parents' Saturday (Meat and Fat) – February 18, 2017
• Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent – ​​March 11, 2017
• Saturday of the 3rd week of Lent – ​​March 18, 2017
• Saturday of the 4th week of Great Lent – ​​March 25, 2017
• Commemoration of deceased soldiers - May 8 and 9, 2017
• Radonitsa – April 25, 2017
• Trinity Parents' Saturday in 2017 - June 3, 2017
• Dmitrievskaya Parents' Saturday - November 4, 2017

Why "parental"? After all, we remember not only our parents, but also other people, often not connected to us by any family ties? By various reasons. First of all, not even because parents, as a rule, leave this world before their children (and therefore too, but this is not the main thing), but because in general our first priority prayer duty is for our parents: of all the people whose temporary earthly life is over, we first of all owe it to those through whom we received this gift of life - our parents and forefathers.

Of course, commemoration of the deceased is not limited to a few days. Memorial services can be served, with rare exceptions, all year round, but there are Saturday days on which the Church calls on all its children to unite in prayer for their departed. To be honest, we sometimes forget to remember our deceased even during home prayer (we still remember our parents, but the older we get, the more people who left a mark on our lives and even left this world, and our memory, on the contrary, weakens ), I'm not even talking about going to church and paying for a memorial service for them. That’s why we need days like these when there is no time to put it off anymore.

There is another aspect of funeral commemoration, reflected in the name of these Saturdays “parental”: clan tradition, clan connection between generations, connection between the living and the deceased, connection between the living, united by common deceased ancestors, generally significant personalities for the clan, events, and memorable places. This is a universal, pre-Christian aspect, which in ancient times found mythological and ritual form in various pagan cults, reminiscences of which are still visible in “folk Orthodoxy”.

And here it is very important, on the one hand, not to confuse the Christian tradition with the pagan heritage woven into it, carefully identifying and removing the latter, on the other hand, to carefully treat parental Saturdays as a means of unifying people precisely because Christian tradition commemoration of the dead helps to comprehend the unity of the human race in the Heavenly Father, to whose adoption we are all called.

People become aware of “whose they will be” in the limited terms of loved ones and distant relatives, they think (at least, they get a reason to think) about what was in their family worthy of acceptance and transmission, and what is worth remembering only in order not to repeat it due to hereditary predisposition.

However, this is only the beginning, the starting point of realizing the unity of the human race, descended from the ancestors created by God in His image and likeness. The understanding of all-human kinship according to the flesh should lead to the understanding of kinship in God; limited unity according to the flesh is the reference point for the desire to find pan-human unity in Christ. And if this does not happen, there is no talk of Christian unity. This unity is pagan, even if it is carried out between people belonging to the Church of Christ. It is pagan in spirit.

Blood, family ties, national identity, geopolitical unity - all this is wonderful until it becomes a priority value, or even an end in itself. And the Orthodox faith, religion, the Church as an institution are then relegated to the level of the “main state bond”, which is defended, yes, but defended in the appropriate spirit - pagan, blasphemously using Orthodox paraphernalia, adjusting its postulates to the absolutized values ​​of the transitory world.

Parental Saturdays, dedicated to our deceased - people who preceded us in the transition from the vain world to eternal life, remind us of the main thing: our race is God's (firstly, by the origin of man, by the essence of his God-like nature, and secondly, by kinship in Christ, into whom we were baptized and in whom we put on life according to His commandments, being sanctified in the Sacraments), and our fatherland is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), and everything earthly is valuable to the extent that it contributes to the healing of the soul, its transformation according to the image of the Creator (Col. 3; 10).

Saturday is the last day of the week. This is the day that completes the seven-week cycle, which begins not on Monday, as is commonly believed in everyday life, but on Sunday, or “week”, in Slavic - a day when they do nothing. According to the first day - the name of the entire week: “week”. Monday, accordingly, is the first day of the week, Tuesday is the second, etc., and Saturday (a word that retains similarities with the Hebrew “Sabbath”) is the final day of the week, as it was in the Old Testament era, with the only difference being that “not doing” has been transferred to the “week”, i.e. on the Lord's Day - on Sunday. But in memory of the Sabbath rest, it is on this last, final, final day of the week that, according to the Charter, it is customary to remember the dead.

Saturday consists of a seven-day cycle, but after this day there is Sunday - the eighth day (the number symbolizing eternity) in relation to the previous Sunday - the first day. Like this: from the Resurrection of Christ to the general Resurrection of all who have died from time immemorial - all: righteous and sinners, believers and unbelievers... for different fates in eternity, depending on who turned out to be who for Christ in life (as Archpriest Vladimir Tsvetkov once said : “At the Last Judgment we will not be horrified, but surprised”).

Death according to the flesh is only a “way station” on the way to the general resurrection from the dead. Main meaning funeral texts - overcoming eternal death in Christ in striving for the general Resurrection.

This meaning is emphasized by the very establishment Dmitrievskaya Saturday, the original purpose of which is to care for the souls of soldiers who fell in the battle for the dignity of life, understood in the light of Revelation - the dignity that a person acquires as he realizes himself in the image of God, becoming as much as possible like the Prototype.

It would be good not to forget the original meaning of establishing this memorial Saturday and to at least somehow justify the sacrifice made for us, making efforts to become Christians, remembering that Christianity, according to St. Basil the Great, this “likeness to God to the extent possible for human nature.”

Parents' Saturdays in 2018 - special days in church calendar, in which Orthodox Christians commemorate deceased relatives. The commemoration of the dead by the church is a special ritual. On these days, a memorial service is held, at which the names of people who have left this world are mentioned. On the eve of the prayer service, believers bring notes to church with the names of deceased relatives. On memorial Saturdays, it is customary to remember not only deceased relatives, but also acquaintances.

These Saturdays are called parental Saturdays because parents often leave this world before their children.

IN Lent There are no services during the week. Therefore, Saturdays are set aside for commemorating the dead. On this day, believers go to church, and after visiting it they go to the cemetery.

In churches, prayers are read to cleanse all Orthodox Christians from the sins. People who come to church pray not only for their loved ones, but also for other people who have ended their existence on earth. Reading the general prayer on Parents' Saturday helps to forgive all sins and allow souls to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Many missing people, as well as people who died under various circumstances, find peace of mind and can ascend to Heaven.

Video: Parents' Saturdays - days of special remembrance of the dead

Parents' Saturdays in remembrance of the departed in 2018

Parents' Saturdays are held traditionally in 2018. These days, churches are holding Divine Liturgy and the remembrance of the dead takes place. People who visit the temple bring notes with the names of deceased relatives and give them to the priest so that he will mention loved ones during the service.

In addition to the usual parental Saturdays, there are also Ecumenical Saturdays (Meat Saturday and Trinity Saturday).

Funeral dates in 2018 according to the Orthodox calendar:

There are sayings associated with parental Saturdays:

Video: Orthodox calendar for 2018: days of fasting and parental Saturdays