It may be akin to the Fifth Beatle, Gummo Marx, that other infielder who played with Tinkers, Evers, and Chance, and whatever else may be an afterthought or a perceived fifth wheel: the work of corporal mercy that calls out to bury the dead.
Of the seven charitable actions enshrined in catechism and tradition, this is considered the last and final. It is often forgotten because, unlike its six predecessors—feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, visiting the imprisoned and the sick, and clothing the naked—it does not emanate from Jesus’s teaching to His Apostles on the Mount of Olives: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
Dead, and ye buried me?
While those are not words, direct or proximate, found in the Gospel of Matthew, burying the dead indeed has been a revered practice of Christianity—which holds bodily resurrection as a tenet of the faith.
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