How to dispose of holy materials?

[Heather Morinelli]

Okay...I have another silly question.
I'm developing quite a collection of "holy" trash. (I didn't want to use the word trash, but I couldn't come up with any better word to use.) For example, my parish priest gave me a whole prosfora to bring home with me after one of the services during Holy Week....well,before we could finish it... it's more of a large holy crouton now....and I have a paschal egg, some palms, etc etc etc. I feel like it would be an abomination to just throw this stuff in the garbage....but what do I do with it?? Bury it? Burn it? I don't know. Please help....

thanks so much
heather

[Br Paul Zimmerman]

Heather,
Burn and then bury the ashes.
Br Paul

[Heather Morinelli]

Br Paul---
Thanks so much...hopefully my neighbors won't think I'm performing some sort of strange ritual...hee hee. Just kiddin.

yours in Christ, heather

[Effie Ganatsios]

Heather, you're not supposed to put any of the things you mentioned in the garbage. When you are given a prosphora, you can freeze whatever you aren't going to eat immediately (just as you do with a normal load of bread). If you really have to throw it out then you can crumble it and sprinkle the pieces in your garden. The same applies to the charcoal and incense that you burn - that needs to be buried or again sprinkled on the soil near the foundations of your house.

The prosphora (offering) has been blessed and that's the reason you can't treat it as garbage.

Effie

[Fr Averky]

Jeather,

Brother Paul and Effie are correct. Try not let too much accumulate - it can be a real problem.

Fr. Averky

[Effie Ganatsios]

Heather, I’d just like to add something about bread – something that I found strange when I first came to Greece but which I now understand to be an expression of piety. Older Greeks would never place an ordinary loaf of bread upside down. I once did this and my father-in-law explained that what I was doing was wrong. Bread, even ordinary bread not just the prosphora, is a symbol of our Lord and should be respected. Did you know that nuns are supposed to gather the crumbs from the bread they have eaten during the meal and eat them as well!

A respect for ordinary, everyday things is one of the beauties of the Orthodox religion. Easter for people here in Greece (before this greedy consumer society overwhelmed everyone) was truly a time of being reborn. Houses were thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom – not just everyday cleaning but painting, rebuilding, etc. (women still go crazy at Easter actually!) and new clothes were bought for Easter – clothes that were expected to last until the following Easter. Now, people usually fast only during Holy Week (except for the older people), new clothes are bought practically every week, housecleaning remains the same (women are fanatics here) but a cleaning woman for the heavier tasks is employed by a lot of women now. I’m looking forward to the move towards simplicity and a resurgence of older values which I expect to hit Greece in about 10 years or so. If I’m still around then of course, God Willing.

Effie

[George Hawkins]

Heather,
You can also wrap the Prosphora in something like Saranwrap/Gladwrap (I am not sure what it would be called in America), but you know, the clingy plastic film you can wrap food in. It keeps the prosphora fresh for quite awhile without freezing or refrigeration. Before you wrap it, you can cut it into smaller pieces, and then have a piece first thing every morning, along with some holy water.
George

[Heather M]

THank you all for helping me out.
I took care of my holy clutter yesterday before picking the kids up from daycare...so the neighborhood kids wouldn't be surrounding around me...I live in a government project...so sometimes privacy is lacking. But it's a small town, so it's pretty quiet. My bike was stolen the other day...I was very sad about this. I never rode the bike, but for someone to steal it was just uncalled for. If they would have asked, I probably would have been more than happy to just give it to them (I suspect that it was one of the older kids running around here), in exchange for taking my trash down to the dumpster...
Oh well...
heather