HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Liturgy of Saint Mark on purgatory and prayer for the dead

Dates: c. 350 · Wikipedia
Summary: The Greek Liturgy of Saint Mark, the historic anaphora of Alexandria, contains an explicit commemoration of the dead: the deacon "reads the record of the dead" (the diptychs) and the priest prays God to "give peace to the souls of our fathers and brethren who have fallen asleep in Jesus" and to "deem them worthy of the kingdom of heaven." A standing Eucharistic intercession for the departed from the Alexandrian church.

Claims & evidence

The Eucharist gives peace to the souls of those who have fallen asleep

O Lord our God, give peace to the souls of our fathers and brethren who have fallen asleep in Jesus, remembering our forefathers of old, our fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, bishops, and the souls of all the holy and just men who have died in the Lord.

— The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, source. Within the anaphora the priest petitions God on behalf of "the souls of our fathers and brethren who have fallen asleep in Jesus" — the dead are active objects of the Church's prayer at the altar, not merely remembered.

A petition that the dead be deemed worthy of the kingdom — read over the diptychs of the dead

The Deacon reads the record of the dead. … Give peace, O Sovereign Lord our God, to the souls of all who dwell in the tabernacles of Thy saints. Graciously bestow upon them in Thy kingdom Thy promised blessing … Give peace to their souls, and deem them worthy of the kingdom of heaven.

— The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, source. The rubric "the Deacon reads the record of the dead" is the reading of the diptychs — the named lists of the departed for whom the church prays. The accompanying prayer asks God to "deem them worthy of the kingdom of heaven," a forward-looking intercession for the dead's final blessedness, not a bare memorial.

Notes

• As with all the anaphoras, dating is layered: the developed Greek text is fourth-to-fifth century, though it rests on older Alexandrian strata (the Strasbourg Papyrus preserves a third-to-fourth-century kernel of the Mark-type prayer). It is placed here c. 350 as the developed Alexandrian witness. The Coptic Liturgy of Saint Cyril is its later descendant.
• The reading of the diptychs of the dead is the liturgical heart of the prayers-for-the-dead practice; the same commemoration appears in the Liturgy of Addai and Mari and the Liturgy of Saint James, and is defended as the Church's universal custom by Epiphanius against Aerius.
• Like the other Eastern witnesses, this belongs to the practice of prayer for the dead, not to the Latin satisfactory fire the East never received — see the cleansing-fire argument.