Dying and the end of life: prayers in Eastern Orthodoxy

Texts from their published editions. Guidance on what this tradition does at this moment is on the occasion page, and background on the tradition is at /traditions/orthodox.

Texts from their published editions

Each text below comes from the edition named under it and was checked twice, independently, before it appeared. Neither check was a person. Where the two disagreed by even one character, the text is not shown here. That is a claim about wording only: these are not selected or endorsed for any particular situation, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed them. Older spelling is kept as the edition prints it. The full record, including the texts we held back because the two transcriptions disagreed, is at the verification record.

With the Saints Give Rest (Hapgood 1906)

The kontakion for the departed, sung at Orthodox funerals and at the memorial services that follow them. It asks rest for the person who has died, in a place without sickness, sorrow or sighing.

English · Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church, 1906

With the Saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of thy servant, where there is neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting.

Isabel Florence Hapgood. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1906. Published 1906, before 1929, US public domain, and the translator died in 1928. Retrieved and verified 2026-09-17. Source

Share this prayer · How this text was verified

Hapgood's is one English rendering among several, and most parishes today use a later one; hers is printed here because it is the one that is out of copyright. She is also not consistent with herself. The same prayer appears with different punctuation in different services of the same 1906 volume, so this is the text as printed in the Order for the Burial of the Dead (Laymen), and makes no claim to be the only form.

Nothing here has been signed by a reviewer credentialed in this tradition. When that happens, reviewed prayers appear above these, and these stay where they are, as an anthology. How that works.