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.
But like the universe, there is an order to this act of love because it plays a direct part in God’s saving plan — and neglecting these duties has wider implications on the living.
Good Friday illustrates this truth with singular clarity. Fidelity to God was hardly evident that day. Instead, it revealed the depths of human frailty: lies, betrayal, cowardliness, abandonment, wrath, and of course the death of Our Lord and Savior.
Yet, often overlooked, is how Christ’s first disciples contributed to the greatest miracle of all — His resurrection on Easter Sunday — by adhering to the commandments, particularly the Judaic funeral customs.
It’s easy to forget this truth amidst the crowds clamoring for His execution. Indeed, crucifixion was a horrifying, dehumanizing death utilized by the Roman Empire to terrify witnesses and its subjects. Reserved for the lowest members of society, victims were often stripped bare and exposed to the elements, and then left to be either “fully decomposed or were entirely consumed by wild beasts.” Dignity was absent — even in death.
Christ proclaimed He would rise on the third day — but that may have taken a different form had it not been for Joseph of Arimathea’s fortitude in asking Pontius Pilate for His body, to which the latter granted. As Scripture describes, he took the body from the cross and “wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever yet been laid” (Luke 23:53). Then women, who had followed Christ, “prepared spices and ointments” to treat the deceased (Luke 23:56).
In doing so, Joseph and the women were not merely tending to grief — but upholding God’s law, which proclaimed that burying the dead was a sign of respect for the deceased and reverence toward God’s creation. Unlike the Romans or elsewhere in the ancient world, this practice even extended to criminals. As the book of Deuteronomy states:
“If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not remain on the tree overnight. You must bury it the same day; anyone who is hanged is a curse of God.”
This corporal work of mercy appears throughout the Old Testament, most prominently in the Book of Joshua and Book of Tobit, bearing striking similarities to the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday.
In the former, Joshua — the Israelite commander who conquered the Promised Land — exemplified this compliance with the law after inflicting capital punishment on five Amorite kings, whom he was at war against. The kings were hanged on a tree until the evening; but then, at sunset, “Joshua commanded that they be taken down…and thrown into the cave where they had hidden.”
In the Book of Tobit, the eponymous Israelite defied the Assyrian King Sennacherib by stealthily burying the bodies of those killed and “thrown behind the wall of Nineveh.” By doing so, Tobit risked his own life, threatened with execution.
Joseph of Arimathea and the women on Good Friday stood firmly in this tradition. As Christ’s disciples, they undoubtedly inculcated His teaching that he had not come to “abolish the law and the prophets,” but to “fulfill them.”
Consider, however, if those faithful disciples fled like most of the Apostles? If they had been paralyzed to act for fear of retribution from Romans or even other Jews? What if Christ had been hanged bare on the cross, left to the buzzards, instead of laid in the tomb?
By God’s grace, Christ’s body did not “undergo corruption.” Instead, Our Lord rose on the third day, not as a ghost or apparition, but as flesh and blood, who ate with His Apostles and then ascended — body and soul — into heaven forty days later.
After a day of misery and turmoil, humanity’s final act on Good Friday exhibited our best qualities: love, compassion, and reverence for Our Lord. By honoring the commandments, Joseph of Arimathea and the women gave Christ a burial that preserved His body’s dignity. This obedient act provided the setting for the Resurrection, allowing the empty tomb to stand as the definitive sign of God’s victory over death.
Their courageous discipleship demonstrates that striving to uphold the commandments, even in simple faithful acts or at personal risk, allows God to accomplish extraordinary ends. Through their devotion, humanity played a role in Easter Sunday.
God calls all of us to do likewise in the modern context — and we should take heed of the early disciples’ example. Through funerals, which are liturgical celebrations, the Church invites the faithful to “filial trust in the providence of our heavenly Father.” Just as Joseph of Arimathea and the women prepared the way for the Resurrection through fidelity to the law, so too are we called to commend our loved ones to Our Father through the Eucharistic sacrifice at funerals.
In so doing, we participate in the mystery of redemption and become “co-workers” in Christ’s mission, as the Catechism describes. Good Friday teaches us that sin, fear, and failure do not have the final word; and Easter proclaims that God’s grace transforms our fidelity — however humble — into the very means by which life conquers death.
To abandon or trivialize this truth diminishes both the dead and the living. Funerals are not for sentiment alone — or merely an avenue to express one’s idiosyncrasies. This mercy reminds us not only about our mortality but strengthens our faith, giving us hope in one day sharing in the Easter Sunday miracle, and abiding in the fullness of life in heaven’s “many dwelling places,” as Christ promised.
Burying the dead is humanity’s active role in salvation history. Our bodies and cremains, therefore, deserve more respect — especially more than collecting dust as a vinyl record.
Andrew Fowler is the Editor of RealClearReligion. He is also the Communications Specialist at Yankee Institute and author of “The Condemned,” a novella about a Catholic priest fighting off the cartel to save the residents of a small desert town (which you can find here).
