The book called “Mashdots,” the Sacramentary, contains the liturgical prayers of the Armenian Church. The prayers of Christian Burial offer the most practical nourishment and the richest guidance for our spiritual life. Indeed, death is the most effective rudder God put in our hands so that we could guide ourselves to the Father’s heavenly kingdom. This awesome power is a communion with Divine Providence, which we bring into reality by distributing divine blessings to all His creatures with great prudence and justice, conscious of such great responsibility.
The Order of prayers to be recited at the home of the deceased focuses on the true nature of our ephemeral existence in the material universe. The dead body lying before us is the tangible proof of the divinely imposed, inescapable limit. It is also an unmistakable reminder of the glorious Resurrection of Jesus, “which He brought in His divine nature, through His saving crucifixion and incorruptible burial” (Order of Prayers at the Home). It is the luminous truth that illuminates the image of God hidden within limited human nature. Death is a powerful punishment through which God molds our human nature into His beautiful image, so that, through such intimacy, our words and, above all, our deeds are made consonant with the life-giving love of Divine Providence.
The force of this love expands our human capacities. It pollinates even the smallest human acts with the Holy Spirit, making them meritorious because He gives these acts the Father’s caring presence. Even the grass of the field, “which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,” as Jesus proclaimed with evident emotion, enjoys the utmost care of the Father, such that King Solomon in all his might and splendor could not dress as gloriously. (Matthew 6.30).
During the Holy Badarak, we pray that this same caring Heavenly Father send His Holy Spirit upon the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of His Son, to make them fruitful in us who are going to partake of this sacrifice, as our justification and the remission and forgiveness of our sins. We are alerted to the danger clearly signaled by Paul the Apostle that we could receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus not for our salvation but for damnation (1 Corinthians 11.27-29). Yes, we partake in this sacrifice as our condemnation if and when our words and deeds are not consonant with the life-giving love of the Divine Providence, foolishly repeating the very same transgression of the old Adam.