The Orthodox calendar has special days for church-wide remembrance of the dead. These days are called parental Saturdays, they were established in the first millennium. Today is Ecumenical Parental Meat Saturday.
There are several parental Saturdays in the year: Saturdays before the meat week and before the holiday of Trinity (Pentecost) — they are called Ecumenical Parental Saturdays.
Dedicating the meat-empty Week to the remembrance of the last Last Judgment of Christ, the Church, in view of this judgment, established to intercede not only for living members, but also for everyone who died from the age of the elderly, in the piety of the elderly, all clans, titles and conditions, especially for those who died by sudden death.
«The Holy Fathers legalized the commemoration of all those who died for the following reason. Many quite often die unnatural deaths, for example: while wandering the seas, in impassable mountains, in gorges and abysses; it happens that they die of hunger, in fires, in war, and freeze. And who will list (list) all genera and types of accidental and unanticipated death? And all of them are deprived of legalized psalm singing and funeral prayers.
That is why the holy fathers, driven by philanthropy, established, based on the apostolic teaching, to perform this general, universal commemoration, so that no one, — whenever, wherever and no matter how he ends earthly life, — does not lose the prayers of the Church».
The solemn all-church commemoration of the deceased this Saturday (as well as on Trinity Parents' Saturday) brings great benefit and assistance to our dead fathers and brothers and at the same time serves as an expression of the fullness of the church life that we live.