Coliva (in Greek, Collyva, in Serbian košivovo, in bulgarian colvo) is a food that is used for religious rituals (it is given to alms at parastasis and funerals) and is prepared from wheat or arpacaş (ground barley rough).
Coliva is a gift brought by believers to the church to sanctification, to the holy day, to someone's birthday, or to the relief of the souls of those who were taken away, to their sins and their removal from the everlasting chastisement.
Coliva is the main element, absolutely necessary for the remembrance of the dead. In all the sacrifices of the remembrance of the dead, the Christian takes care to make a cage that he brings to the church together with a bottle of wine to be sanctified.
Coliva was introduced into the practice of the Church after the miracle of Saint Theodore Tiron, 50 years after the death of the saint, in the time of Emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363) who, in order to mock the Christians, ordered the governor of Constantinople to sprinkle All supplies in the food markets with the blood sacrificed to idols in the first week of the Great Lent. St. Theodore, defending them in the dream of Archbishop Eudoxius of Constantinople (360-370), instructed him to tell Christians not to buy anything from the market but rather to eat hungry wheat with honey. Not long after, the feast of the Holy Martyr Theodore was ordained in the calendar on the first Saturday of the Great Fast (more precisely in the time of Patriarch Nectarios of Constantinople (381-397)). Since then, on the first Saturday of the Great Lent, the death of the dead and the remembrance of Saint Theodore Tiron are commemorated.
Coliva symbolizes the Church, that is, all Christians, united by the same faith in God. While in the church we sing "Eternal remembrance," the faithful keep the collegiate with the priest and swing it from the top down. Those who can not touch the collie plateau touch their faces. Those in the back row do the same thing and virtually all get together by touching the coliva.
Their union symbolizes the assembly of the Church, all its members baptized, alive or asleep, and the coliva, at that moment, symbolizes the soul of the sleeping one rising up to heaven. Unfaithful believers to reach the cage show that the Church, through all its members, brings before God the soul of the sleeping man and asks Him to forgive and receive him in the Kingdom of Heaven. It also symbolizes the constant prayer reminder that the Church will make from now on for the past to the Lord.
Coliva, made of boiled wheat, sweetened with honey or sugar, imagines the dead body itself, for the main food of the human body is wheat (from which the bread is made).
It can be consumed as a dessert. Many Romanians love this sweet and easy to prepare product.
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