The person whose funeral I will preside at died in late June. Her mortal remains were cremated. Over the ensuing months, her bereaved husband did his best to gather together her family. Today is the day they all agreed on to hold her funeral. After the funeral, her remains will be committed to her resting place. One reason for not celebrating a Funeral Mass is that virtuall on one present will be Catholic. Most, like the deceased prior to her conversion a number of years ago, practice no religion.
My first first funeral rite as a deacon was on Good Friday of 2004. This was just few months after I was ordained. One of the local funeral directors, himself a Catholic, was going to bury a woman who was born and raised in Salt Lake City but hadn't lived here for many, many years. She had married but never had children. Her closest relatives were a great niece and great nephew. She had lived for many, many years in Portland, Oregon. Her relatives lived in Boise, Idaho.
So, I went to the cemetery and conducted my first Rite of Committal, which was the deceased's only funeral service. The people gathered around her grave with me were the funeral director and the men who were there to bury her, the cemetery workers. But gather reverently we did. This is a memory etched deeply in my memory.
The woman whose funeral I am presiding at today is someone I knew quite well. She was a dear, sweet, gentle person. Her husband, who I assisted in becoming Catholic (he had been Lutheran), is a friend. It is a privilege to serve them both in this way.
Photo by Brett Sayles. Used under the provisions of Creative Common License
Here is an excerpt from my homily for Nanci's funeral. The Gospel Scott, her husband, chose is John 11:25-26:
In our short reading from the Gospel According to Saint John, Jesus is speaking to Martha, the sister of Lazarus. Martha and her sister Mary had summoned Jesus several days earlier, when their brother Lazarus was still alive but gravely ill. Mysteriously, Jesus delayed going to Bethany until after he passed.A bit later, I included this:
Martha expressed her disappointment, noting that Jesus could’ve come sooner and perhaps healed Lazarus, sparing him from death. Jesus assured her, saying “Your brother will rise.” To which Martha responded, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” No doubt, standing before her brother’s grave, that “last day” seemed to her a long way off, perhaps more a desperate wish than a present reality.
In kind of similar way, given the manner and circumstances of Nanci’s passing from this life to eternity, some of you have likely thought, “If I only I had…” fill in blank. Because physical death is an inevitability in a fallen world, in the end, there are no “avoidable” deaths.
Woody Allen once averred that he did not want to achieve immortality through his artistic work. Rather, he quipped, “I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” Funny as this is, what Allen gives comic expression to is something we all, or at least most of us, want. Sadly, in His infinite wisdom, God didn’t set it up to work that way.
Sorry, Woody.
A major difference between a Christian funeral and a non-religious “celebration of life” is the focus on the hope generated by Christ’s rising from the dead. “If there is no resurrection of the dead,” Saint Paul insisted, then Christians “are the most pitiable people of all.” But for those who have died, been buried, and risen with Christ is baptism, resurrection is a present, not a distant reality!Our traditio for this solemn Friday is Paradisum from the traditional Requiem Mass:
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