On April 20 and 21, 2005, Holy Trinity Orthodox Church performed the funeral services required for a priest for Fr. John Platko. The quotes are from those services, and my thoughts are interspersed.

In faith and hope and love,
in meekness and purity and priestly worth,
uprightly you discharged your sacred functions, O memorable one.
Therefore the eternal God whom you served
Shall Himself establish your spirit
In a place of brightness and beauty, where the righteous rest,
And you will receive pardon and great mercy at the Judgment Day of Christ

I didn’t know Fr. John as well as I would’ve liked. My impressions of him over the few months I’ve been at this church and the times that we talked was of a quiet man, someone with a musical bent, someone so serene that he seemed to already have one foot in the next world, but whose placid blue eyes still contained a measure of determination that I wouldn’t have countermanded lightly. It wasn’t until I heard the remarks of those closer to him amongst his family, friends and the church where he had been parish priest for over 25 years that I heard that he also had a slapstick sense of humor, that he presided over an epic mud-fight in youth camp, that he generally enjoyed all of his life. Then I was conditionally jealous of those who had known him better. I’ve been blessed to have such spiritual fathers myself, and I can’t imagine how I could part with any of them. I wouldn’t be able to sum them up for others as well as those at the funeral did for Fr. John. How much is contained in the anecdotes I might summon up, how much I would try to convey of what the slightest remark or impression meant to me — but always I would know that you just had to be there.

***

Ode IV
O Christ — Master, Savior, tenderly compassionate — mercifully grant Thy mansions of light unto this Thy servant, who through repentance before he died burned before Thee as a shining light.

Kathisma hymn - tone 6
Truly all things are vanity.
Life is but a shadow and a dream.
For in vain does everyone born on earth trouble himself, as the Scriptures say.
When we have gained the world, we take up our abode in the grave,
Where kings and beggars lie down together,
Give rest, therefore, to Thy servant departed this life,
O Christ our God,
For Thou lovest mankind.

The hall was filled to capacity Wednesday night, with people spilling into the narthex. At the conclusion of the service, the bishop and clergy filed out followed by parishioners. I could just glimpse them passing by through the people that obstructed the view from the choir’s location. I was brought out of my own wool-gathering by the incongruity of seeing one man carrying an angelic-looking baby. It was fast asleep, and the light of the setting sun coming through the window made it look too white and perfect to be real. It was so out of place with the prayers and hymns as to be jarring, and yet it also had that surprising element of recognition. Because it made me think of the icons of the Dormition, where Christ is seen looking at the body of His virgin mother in repose, at the same time that He holds a tiny child-version of her, showing that He holds her soul liberated from her earthly body and ever-young. As it will be one day with all of us.

***

Do not forget me, my beloved brethren
When you sing to the Lord,
But call to mind our brotherhood,
And pray fervently to God,
That with the righteous the Lord will give me rest.

from Ode V
Lo, now we behold him who lies here, but shall never lie before us any more. Lo, already his tongue is stilled. And lo, his mouth has ceased to speak. Farewell, O my firends, my children. Farewell, O brethren. Farewell, O my comrades, for I go forth upon my way. But make commemoration of me with the song: Alleluia!

Memory eternal. That’s the Orthodox expression that covers all the other things that we would like to say concering the deceased, our version of “Rest in peace.” Is anyone’s memory really eternal? Not on this earth, to be sure. The Great Pyraminds of Egypt and the Taj Mahal were all built to try to guarantee that a burial site would always commend certain dead to the living, and yet do we remember them? We can’t do anything eternally — only God can do that. But Father John will seem to be with us, I’m sure.

When we sang the Pre-sanctified Liturgy on Thursday morning, the choir sang the version of “Let My Prayer Arise” that he composed, his name lightly pencilled onto the page at the upper right by choir members when he neglected to add it himself. The piece is complex and offers none of the ordinary sorts of harmonies that allow choirs to mail it in. It has to be done perfectly to offer up its gifts of cascading melodies, diminished chords and emotive suspense and mystery. But when it is done perfectly, it does the job of that hymn — telling our ears that we are now coming closer to heaven. In these things, he’ll be remembered. In the look and feel of the church he helped bring into existence. In the family he leaves. In the hearts of so many people. His eternal memory is for God alone. We only remember as well as we can.

***

Exapostilarion
Now I am at rest.
Now I have found peace.
I have escaped corruption.
I have passed from death to life.
Glory to Thee, O Lord.

Verses of St. John of Damascus - Tone 1
What pleasure in life is not mixed with grief?
What earthly glory endures forever?
All things are feeble shadow and deluding dreams.
Death sweeps them away in a single moment.
But in the light of Thy face, O Christ, and in the sweetness of Thy beauty,
Give rest to him whom Thou hast chosen,
For Thou alone lovest mankind.

As we were coming close to the time of communion at the Pre-sanctified Liturgy, we said the prayer for those about to commune, one which mentions our attitude of awe and reverence with regard to the Gifts, and reminds us to say in response, “I am the chief of sinners.” But at this point, the choir member behind me mispronounced the word and said, “sunner.” I was going to ignore it — especially in light of the sobriety of the environs. But when I glanced back at her, I could see suppressed mirth in her eyes.
“Sunners?” I whispered to her.
She shrugged.
“What’s a sunner?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re their chief.”

By virtue of our long usage to the occasional lightness to be found in even the most dire Orthodox service, we didn’t giggle or trouble others. We both found a glint of the division of light and shadow that allows us to hymn the dead and know that we’ll go on living. We went back to the service and picked up where we had left off, but my mind was a little less tired and my feet hurt a little less. From what I hear of Fr. John, I assume that’s the way he would have wanted it. I would hope that people at my funeral service would do the same.

***

The Last Kiss - tone 2
Come, let us give the last kiss unto the dead,
rendering thanks unto God,
For he has vanished from among his kin and presses onward to the grave,
and he troubles himself no longer with vanities,
or with the flesh, which suffers sore distress.
Where now are his kinsfolk and his friends?
Lo, we are parted!

Let us beseech the Lord that He will give him rest.
Unto what shall our life be compared?
Truly, to a flower or a vapor or the dew of the morning.
Come, therefore, let us gaze intently at the grave.
Where is the beauty of the body, where is its youth?
Where are the eyes and the fleshly form?
Like the grass they have all perished; they all have been destroyed.
Come, therefore, let us bow down in humble submissiveness with tears before the feet of Christ.

This is the song that the choir sang over and sing as people came to pay their last respects at the casket and receive a blessing from Archbishop JOB. I believe that this song is the same that is sung for any Orthodox funeral at this point. And it’s rough, man. It’s the kind of thing that has made me leave explicit instructions to Greg to tell the non-Orthodox in my family — especially my mother, who has an absolute loathing of funerals — that they don’t have to attend, that they can wish me well apart from these prayers said by my church community. Because I’m not sure that it’s something for the faint of heart to approach a dear face that lies utterly immobile and composed in a way no living face is and hear, “Where is the beauty of the body, where is its youth? Where are the eyes and the fleshly form?” Given that the words were probably penned in the days before bodies were embalmed as well as today and open caskets were the norm, I can’t imagine what thoughts they might have provoked. Maybe it just seems grotesque, or barbaric. But it comes on the heels of hours of poetry concerning the blessedness of eternal rest, the invincibility of the devoted soul, our hope in Christ’s resurrection. The words aren’t meant to be cruel — they’re meant to save us and allow us to open our eyes when we would wish to keep them shut.

***

At the graveside
Open, O earth, and receive the body formed from you by the hand of God, and again returning to you as to its mother. What has been made in His image, the Creator has already reclaimed. Receive, then, this body as your own.

These were the last words of the service. Or services, rather. At the time we heard Archbishop JOB say these words over a flower-bedecked casket that was poised over its grave, we had been to two hours of a modified Vespers service on Wednesday night, three hours of a Pre-sanctified Liturgy and the loving speeches of those who knew Fr. John well on Thursday morning, a funeral procession to the cemetery and the bringing of the casket to the graveside accompanied by several more songs and prayers. You’d think there wouldn’t have possibly been anything else to think or feel or say. And yet, after the bishop left and someone else formally dismissed us, no one moved. As I said, I hardly knew him — I certainly have had more conversations with grocery store clerks and long-distance clients than I did with him — but I didn’t want to go either.

Memory eternal.