Koliva

At its base koliva is boiled wheat berries, sweetened with honey or sugar and mixed with some combination of raisins, ground walnuts or almonds, pomegranate seeds, sesame, cinnamon, and other fruits and spices. It is often mounded on a platter and covered with powdered sugar smoothed into a white surface, then decorated — a cross, sometimes the departed's initials, sometimes a border of nuts or candied fruit. Recipes vary widely from one home and country to the next; the wheat is the one constant.

It is prepared for the memorials of the departed and brought to church, where it rests on a small table (often beside a candle and a photograph or icon) to be blessed during the service and then shared among those present. Receiving and eating it is itself an act of prayer — each person, taking a spoonful, says or thinks, "May his (or her) memory be eternal."

The whole meaning of koliva is carried in a single image of Christ's: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24). The grain must be buried and must dissolve before it can rise as a living, fruitful plant. St. Paul turns the same picture to the resurrection of the body: what we sow "is not quickened, except it die," and God "giveth it a body as it hath pleased him" (1 Corinthians 15:36-38). The buried wheat is the buried Christian, and the green shoot is the resurrection.

The rest of the dish is read the same way. The sweetness — honey, sugar, fruit — speaks of the sweetness and blessedness the Church prays the departed will enjoy with the saints; the pomegranate and the many mingled ingredients suggest the abundance and "much fruit" the risen life bears. So koliva is not a morbid custom but a confession of hope worked in food: at the very table of mourning, the Church places a sign that the grave is not the end.

Koliva accompanies the memorials of the departed — the third, ninth, and fortieth days, anniversaries, and name days — and the general commemorations on the Saturdays of Souls before Great Lent and Pentecost, when whole parishes bring their dishes and lists of names. It may also be prepared to honor a saint on a feast day, in thanksgiving.

By tradition, boiled wheat is bound up with the first Saturday of Great Lent and the memory of the martyr St. Theodore the Recruit (Tyro). The tradition tells that when the emperor Julian the Apostate ordered the marketplace food secretly defiled with the blood of pagan sacrifice, St. Theodore appeared to the archbishop of Constantinople and warned the Christians to eat instead boiled wheat with honey — koliva. The Church has kept the memory ever since, and the sharing of koliva remains one of its plainest and most eloquent acts of prayer for the departed: a handful of grain that preaches the resurrection.