Prayer for the Absent
Question
I attended a prayer in one of the churches, and there was no coffin and no body. It was said to be a prayer for the absent. Is this liturgically permissible?
Answer
Yes… in the rite there is what is called the prayer for the absent.
This is because sometimes the body may not be found. Such as a person who died in a plane crash, or drowned in a ship in the ocean, or in an earthquake, or in the bombing of a place during war, or in any similar disaster, and it was not possible to find the body. In that case, one may pray for his soul the prayer for the absent. It is a full funeral prayer…
And I remember that I prayed the prayer for the absent for Emperor Haile Selassie.
This was in the Great Cathedral in Cairo, after the announcement of his death, considering him one of the sons of the Coptic Church. That was during the rule of Mengistu, the communist, over Ethiopia. And no one knew where the emperor was buried!! Participating with me in this prayer was the Metropolitan of New Delhi in India, Mar Gregorios. Among those present was the former minister, the late Mr. Merit Ghali. And it is not strange that we pray for those who have departed our perishable world, in the absence of their bodies:
For we continually pray the Litany of the Departed for the dead in general, where no body is present… Likewise every memorial we pray in any liturgy is a prayer for one or some of the departed, where there is no body as well.
And prayer is originally for the souls, not for the bodies…
And in every funeral we hold, we say: “This soul for whose sake we have gathered today… O Lord, grant it repose in the Paradise of Delight”…
We do not ask repose for the body that will be eaten by worms and turn to dust, but we ask repose for the spirit that did not die, whether the dead body is present or not…
And even in the case of the presence of the dead body, the prayer is for the spirit. And those who go to the cemeteries to pray for their dead, their prayers are for the repose (rest) of their souls, not for the repose of the body. As for the bodies or the remaining bones, they are only to remind us of the spirits that used to dwell in them, and which are still alive…
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in Al-Keraza Magazine – Year 23 – Issues 15, 16 (14-4-1995)
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