For forty days after my father's death, I believe we communicated on a level not just more precious and succinct than we had for many years, but deeper and more meaningfully than ever before.
I'm not talking about spiritualist seances, ghostly apparitions or any other "new age" self-delusions so popular, or even the "near death experience" crowd and its money-making exaggerations of, or fabrications about the hereafter.
No. But Orthodox Christians do pray for the dead -- their own, and ultimately ALL those who have passed from this life, believers or not. We do that at every liturgy, and at length during specially designated services throughout the year like the most recent "Souls Saturday."
We especially pray for our loved ones, following a practice as ancient as our 2,000-year-old faith. So, offering me solace after my father, Robert Mims Sr. died at 96 in mid-January, my "spiritual father" -- Fr. Justin Havens, who ironically is a couple years younger than my own son -- suggested I pray the "Akathist for a Loved One who has Fallen Asleep" during my 40-day period of mourning.
There's a lot of theology, tradition and pure poetry within this prayer. And certainly, it is first a prayer of intercession on behalf of the departed.
Intercession, in that it seeks to support and bless a loved one who has passed in much the same way we do when they are physically present with us -- and for with Orthodox Christians, there is no separation between the living and those who have died.
We pray for them, they pray for us; the circle is NOT broken; in the Eucharist and liturgy we enter heaven in worship, the church corporeal and the church spiritual becoming one in time and space.
But it is more than this intercessory act of love for the dead. It is also meant as a spiritual balm and therapy for those who mourn. And THAT is what I meant by my opening comment.
During those forty days of prayer, there was a photograph of my father on a shelf below icons of Christ, His Mother, several saints, and the cross, I communed with the Holy Mystery, and my dad, too. Often tears halted me, and at those times it seemed the piercing eyes of my father and his knowing smile literally shown with love. . . and encouragement.
The last of the forty days of the akathist came on a Sunday, so I had arrived a bit early to have time in a small chapel off the narthex of Sts. Peter & Paul in downtown Salt Lake City. It was the toughest of the prayers for me, as if I was finally saying goodbye.
I sobbed through much of the prayer, but as I neared its end there was peace; the bittersweet was somehow, well, sweeter.
One of many of the prayer's kontakions that echo in my mind still was this one:
"When earthly sojourning is ended, how grace-filled in the passing to the world of the Spirit; what contemplation of new things, unknown to the earthly world, and of heavenly beauties.
"The soul returns to its fatherland, where the bright sun, the righteousness of God, enlightens those who sing: Alleluia!"
