YOUCAT Lesson 278
YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic
youth
278 What is the purpose of a Christian funeral?
A Christian funeral is a service performed by the Christian
community for the benefit of its dead.
It expresses the sorrow of the survivors, yet it always has a Paschal
character (relating to Christ’s resurrection).
Ultimately, we die in Christ so as to celebrate with him the feast of
the Resurrection. [1686-1690]
Do you doubt that you shall rise from the dead? Jesus demonstrated this truth when he brought
Lazarus forth from a tomb after having been dead four days. It is part of the Christian creed that we
”believe in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting”.
ARTICLE 2
CHRISTIAN FUNERALS
CHRISTIAN FUNERALS
…….1686 The Order
of Christian Funerals (Ordo exsequiarum) of the Roman
liturgy gives three types of funeral celebrations, corresponding to the three
places in which they are conducted (the home, the church, and the cemetery),
and according to the importance attached to them by the family, local customs,
the culture, and popular piety. This order of celebration is common to all the
liturgical traditions and comprises four principal elements: --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second
Edition
…….1687 The greeting of the community. A
greeting of faith begins the celebration. Relatives and friends of the deceased
are welcomed with a word of "consolation" (in the New Testament sense
of the Holy Spirit's power in hope).(Compare 1 Thessalonians 4:18.)188 The
community assembling in prayer also awaits the "words of eternal
life." The death of a member of the community (or the anniversary of a
death, or the seventh or thirtieth day after death) is an event that should
lead beyond the perspectives of "this world" and should draw the
faithful into the true perspective of faith in the risen Christ. –CCC
…….1688 The liturgy of the
Word during funerals demands very careful preparation because the assembly
present for the funeral may include some faithful who rarely attend the
liturgy, and friends of the deceased who are not Christians. The homily in
particular must "avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy"(Order of Christian Funerals 41.)189 and
illumine the mystery of Christian death in the light of the risen Christ.
–CCC
…….1689 The Eucharistic Sacrifice. When the celebration takes place in church
the Eucharist is the heart of the Paschal reality of Christian death.(Compare Order of Christian Funerals 41.)190 In
the Eucharist, the Church expresses her efficacious communion with the
departed: offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit the sacrifice of the death
and resurrection of Christ, she asks to purify his child of his sins and their
consequences, and to admit him to the Paschal fullness of the table of the
Kingdom.(Compare Order of Christian
Funerals 57.)191 It is by the
Eucharist thus celebrated that the community of the faithful, especially the
family of the deceased, learn to live in communion with the one who "has
fallen asleep in the Lord," by communicating in the Body of Christ of
which he is a living member and, then, by praying for him and with him. –CCC
.......1690 A farewell to
the deceased is his final "commendation to God" by the Church. It is
"the last farewell by which the Christian community greets one of its
members before his body is brought to its tomb."(Order of Christian Funerals 10.)192 The
Byzantine tradition expresses this by the kiss of farewell to the
deceased:
By this final greeting "we sing for his
departure from this life and separation from us, but also because there is a
communion and a reunion. For even dead, we are not at all separated from one
another, because we all run the same course and we will find one another again
in the same place. We shall never be separated, for we live for Christ, and now
we are united with Christ as we go toward him . . . we shall all be
together in Christ."(St. Simeon of
Thessalonica, De ordine sepulturæ. 336:Patrologia Graeca 155,684.)193 --CCC
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