The best manifestation of love for a deceased neighbor is the memory of him, expressed in a prayer for the repose of the soul. In the Orthodox tradition, it is customary to order special commemorations of the dead. One of these is the magpie.
In the Christian Orthodox tradition, it is customary to perform not only private (home or otherwise private) prayers, but also conciliar prayers, offered up in the church. There are several types of prayer commemoration, for example, prayers at prayer services, memorial services, or at liturgies. At the same time, Orthodox believers pray not only for the living, but also for the departed.
After a person finishes his earthly journey, believers not only commemorate the deceased at home, inviting a priest for the funeral service, but also submit notes of repose to the church. One of the most common prayers for the deceased is the order of the magpie. Forty-mouth is a prayer for the deceased, offered up by the priest in the altar during the proskomedia (sometimes the same names are remembered at the funeral litany at the liturgy). The priest, reading the names of the deceased, takes out particles from the prosphora in memory of these people. Almost every Orthodox Christian who has survived the death of a relative tries to order the magpie for repose. The magpie can be ordered for forty days (or forty liturgies), six months, a year. In large monasteries the magpie is accepted for eternal remembrance.
Sometimes you can hear insistent recommendations from believers of the older generation about the mandatory need to order the forty-mouth for the deceased in seven churches. In some cases, it is even advised to make a trip to other cities for the obligatory order of the magpie. Regarding this situation, it is worth noting that in the Church there is no obligatory indication that the magpie should be ordered in exactly seven churches.
The popular opinion about the order of the magpie about the dead in seven churches is based on some sacred, mystical understanding of the number seven. A logical question arises: why in seven churches? Perhaps people who adhere to such an ultimatum opinion have an association with the seven sacraments or the seven Ecumenical Councils. In the Orthodox Church, such an approach to prayer for the dead is inappropriate. It cannot be said that prayer by means of a magpie in one, two, six or ten churches will be less effective and somehow "wrong."
Orthodoxy is alien to the concept of the "correct" order of the magpie in seven churches. In many cities of Russia there are no seven parishes, often in the regions in some areas there is only one church for several villages. A person is simply not able to travel tens and sometimes hundreds of kilometers to other temples in order to recruit seven of them. This practice should not be taken as mandatory.
In prayer for the deceased, it should be understood that the numbers themselves are not important. The more a person prays himself, the more he (as far as possible) commemorates his relatives in churches, the better. Therefore, of course, it is good when the deceased is commemorated in seven parishes, but it is even better when such prayers are performed in ten, twenty parishes, and so on. At the same time, there is nothing wrong if a person is remembered only in a few churches. It must be remembered that prayer for the departed should be carried out not only through the order of the magpie and the subsequent forgetting of the person. Living people themselves must perform prayer commemorations at home and in church.
Often, the prayer and the magpie, ordered in a single parish, are more effective and gracious for the soul of the deceased than the execution of such commemorations in seven or even ten churches (if in the first case the person himself does not forget the deceased and often prays for him, in contrast to the second situation, when the order of the magpie is a banal unsubscription based on the mystical understanding of the number seven).
Thus, it is impossible to talk about the obligatory order of the magpie for the deceased in seven churches.
