Monday, August 18, 2025
To our extended friends, extended family, kumovi and our Church (our community),
Our mama was amazing. We are so thankful to have had her as a mama - what fantastic memories and genuine unconditional love! This is why we, my sister and I, go to Church as often as we do - we are just so thankful to the Lord for giving our souls to genuinely good parents. We have seen so much out there, in life, and do not take it for granted that our parents are good and did the best, worked the hardest and enjoyed the most that they could - provided us everything within their means - AND FOR THAT (and much more) we are thankful to God .
What a blessed repose the Lord granted her — the kind of ending we Orthodox all pray for:
‘For a Christian ending to our life, painless, blameless, and peaceful; and for a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ.’
She entered into her final days on Wednesday, the forefeast of the Procession of the Precious and Life-giving Cross of the Lord, the first day of the Dormition Fast and the day of each week we remember the betrayal of Christ. She reposed, the day after Friday when we remember His saving Passion and death, Saturday, we commend* her to the Lord, and the next day, Sunday the day of the Glorious Resurrection, we look to Christ’s victory over death with hope.
How different it is to face this moment with the True Faith, knowing that Christ has trampled down death by death.
Memory eternal MAMA.
* * As The ONE Holy Catholic (not Roman) and Apostolic Church teaches us at every Divine Liturgy, we are to commend ourselves, one another, and our whole life unto Christ our God. In her final days, we too commend our mother’s soul into the hands of the Lord, as Christ Himself said from the Cross: ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.’ This is the peace and hope of every Christian repose.