In countries where old and strong Christian traditions have historically developed, everyone knows that after a person's death, the third day after the sad event, the ninth day and the fortieth day are of particular importance …
In countries where historically long and strong Christian traditions have developed, everyone knows that after the death of a person, the third day after the sad event, the ninth day and the fortieth day are of particular importance. Almost everyone knows, but many cannot say for what reasons these dates - 3 days, 9 days and 40 days - are so important. What happens, according to traditional beliefs, with the soul of a person until the ninth day after his departure from earthly life?
Soul path
Christian ideas about the posthumous path of the human soul may differ depending on a particular denomination. And if in the Orthodox and Catholic picture of the afterlife and the fate of the soul in it there are still few differences, then in various Protestant movements the spread of opinions is very large - from almost complete identity with Catholicism to moving away from tradition, to complete denial of the existence of hell as places of eternal torment for the souls of sinners. Therefore, the Orthodox version of what happens to the soul in the first nine days after the beginning of another, afterlife, is more interesting.
Patristic tradition (that is, the recognized corpus of the writings of the Fathers of the Church) says that after the death of a person, for almost three days, his soul has almost complete freedom.
She not only possesses all the “baggage” from earthly life, that is, hopes, attachments, full memory, fears, shame, the desire to complete some unfinished business, and so on, but is also able to be anywhere. It is generally accepted that during these three days the soul is either next to the body, or if a person died away from home and family, next to their loved ones, or in those places that, for some reason, were especially dear or remarkable for this human. On the third tribute, the soul loses complete freedom of its behavior and is taken by the angels to Heaven to worship the Lord there. That is why on the third day, according to tradition, it is necessary to hold a memorial service and thus finally say goodbye to the soul of the deceased.
Having bowed to God, the soul goes on a kind of "excursion" around paradise: the Kingdom of Heaven is shown to it, it gets an idea of what paradise is, it sees the union of righteous souls with the Lord, which is the goal of human existence, meets the souls of saints, and so on. This “sightseeing” journey of the soul through paradise lasts six days. And here, according to the Fathers of the Church, the first torments of the soul begin: seeing the heavenly delight of the saints, she realizes that she is unworthy of sharing their fate due to her sins and is tormented by doubts and fear that she will not go to heaven. On the ninth day, the angels again take the soul to God so that she can glorify His Love for the saints, which she could just observe personally.
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What's important these days for the living
However, according to the Orthodox worldview, one should not perceive the nine days after death as an exclusively otherworldly affair, which does not seem to concern the surviving relatives of the deceased. On the contrary, it is precisely forty days after a person's death that for his family and friends is the time of the greatest convergence of the earthly world and the Kingdom of Heaven. Because it is during this period that the living can and must make every effort to contribute to the best possible fate of the soul of the deceased, that is, its salvation. To do this, you need to constantly pray, hoping for God's mercy and forgiveness for the soul of her sins. This is important from the point of view of determining the fate of the human soul, that is, where it will await the Last Judgment, in heaven or in hell. At the Last Judgment, the fate of each soul will be finally decided, so that those of them who were placed in hell have hope thatthat prayers for her will be heard, she will be forgiven (if a person is prayed for, even though he has committed many sins, it means that there was something good in him) and will be rewarded with a place in paradise.
The ninth day after the death of a person is in Orthodoxy, as strange as it sounds, almost festive. People believe that the soul of the deceased has been in paradise for the last six days, albeit as a guest, and now it can adequately praise the Creator.
Moreover, it is believed that if a person led a righteous life and won the favor of the Lord with his good deeds, love for others and repentance for his sins, then his posthumous fate can be decided after nine days. Therefore, on this day, a person's loved ones should, firstly, pray especially fervently for his soul, and secondly, hold a memorial meal. The commemoration on the ninth day, from the point of view of tradition, should be "uninvited" - that is, no one should be specially invited to them. Those who wish the soul of the deceased all the best should themselves remember this responsible day and come without reminders.
However, in reality, funerals are almost always invited in a special way, and if more people are expected than the dwelling can accommodate, then they are held in restaurants or similar institutions. The commemoration on the ninth day is a calm memory of the deceased, which should not turn into either an ordinary party or a funeral gathering. It is noteworthy that the Christian concept of the special meaning of three, nine and forty days after the death of a person was adopted by modern occult teachings. But they gave these dates a different meaning: according to one version, the ninth day is marked by the fact that the body supposedly decomposes during this period; according to another, at this point, that of the bodies, after the physical, mental and astral, which can appear as a ghost, dies.
