In an age of hyper-individualism, funerals have not escaped unscathed. Increasingly, they are recast as secular “celebrations of life” or replaced by novel practices — planting cremains as trees, pressing ashes into vinyl records, or even launching them from a cannon. Yet how a soul is commended to God matters because it did so to Jesus Christ on Good Friday, but more so for the participants who perform the corporal work of mercy: burying the dead.
A funeral is not merely symbolic, but an efficacious prayer proclaiming Christ’s victory over death. Mourners join in asking that their loved one is purified of “sins and their consequences” with the hope in God’s eternal, loving mercy. Indeed, God is central to this “last farewell,” reminding the faithful that He, too, weeps with us in our grief.
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