Thousands upon thousands of Christian parishes are bucking the trend and retrieving something of All Saints, a very deserving and moving tribute. In our own parish there was a pilgrimage on All Souls Saturday to a cemetery, to further our ministries and honor the “faithful departed,” while on Sunday we observed All Saints’ Day, moved up this year due to the Hallowe’en and Cubs ritual days. Pictures of our “departed loved ones” are mounted and honored, though not venerated in church.
The meaning of such honoring is changing in a world increasingly called “pluralist,” “secular,” and “commercial.” The Wall Street Journal Friday noted that “The Funeral Is Reborn in Changing Times.” James R. Hagerty chronicled the changes: “As more Americans choose cremation—often dispensing with the need for caskets, burial plots and dreary rituals—the funeral industry is reinventing itself. The goal: stay relevant and avoid a change in profit.” The owner of a partnership of 50 funeral homes and nine cemeteries has invented a post-liturgical-era event: “We don’t call it a funeral service… We call it a gathering.” Those who lose money with the decline in the use and sales of expensive caskets, because of the huge increase in cremations, win some profits back by peddling very expensive urns, to hold the ashes of loved ones.
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