278. “For even dead, we are not at all separated from one another…”

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 278

Ave Maria series

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]

Raising of Lazarus by Carl Heinrich Bloch 1834-1890.....91

“We are not at all separated from one another (by death) because we all run the same course and we will find one another again in the same place.”  Simon of Thessalonica (d. 1429, theologian and mystic)

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”.

[1686-1690]

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). (Compare1 Corinthians 15:42-44.)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: --CCC

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

JT  Raising of Lazarus