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| Death: Our Birth into Eternal life
Patrick Gorman |
The following article is the next installment in a series that will appear in the Catholic Herald to offer catechesis and formation concerning end of life decisions, dying, death, funerals, and burial of the dead from the Catholic perspective.
“Open the gates of paradise to your servant.” — Prayer of Commendation
“O day of wrath! Day of calamity and misery! Day immense and day most bitter!”
The Funeral Mass is perhaps the rite that has changed the most in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
The pre-conciliar Mass (still celebrated in the Extraordinary Form) contained emotional prayers, the first sentence of this article being but one of those.
It’s about judgment day.
When you have a free moment, listen to the “Dies irae” by Giuseppe Verdi.
If that doesn’t put the fear of God into you, nothing will!
God’s mercy and salvation
The revised (post-Vatican II ritual) focuses more on God’s mercy and salvation through the Cross of Christ. For one example, consider this line from the Prayer of Commendation: “Open the gates of paradise to your servant.”
There is much more focus throughout the Mass on our hope for Heaven rather than our fear of Hell.
The priest may now wear white vestments (hope in the resurrection) rather than black or violet (mourning, death, sorrow for sin).
The family of the deceased can play a more central role in the planning and participation of the liturgies.
Parishes do more to assist grieving families and friends.
The reformed funeral is found in the Order of Christian Funerals (OCF) which has been our topic these last three weeks.
As mentioned in the last articles, the OCF divides the rites into three “stations,” somewhat like we do for the Easter Triduum.
These stations fall at critical points for the mourners — the vigil (when the body is first seen and the word first proclaimed), the Funeral Mass (the supreme form of Catholic prayer for the soul of the deceased), and the committal.
The OCF also includes a shorter form of the funeral which is just the Liturgy of the Word, which can be used in the absence of a priest.
Baptism and funeral linked
There is a strong theological and emotional tie that binds together our baptism and funeral.
Most of us are familiar with a Baptism where a child or adult is brought into the Church through water and the invocation of the Triune God.
At the beginning of a Funeral Mass, the body (coffin) is sprinkled with holy water to remind ourselves of our Baptism — the sacrament in which we died and rose in Christ and became members of the Church.
As the Funeral Mass continues, a large white garment (called a pall) is placed over the coffin, calling to mind our own white baptismal garment received at Baptism.
When we receive it at baptism we are told to “bring it unstained into eternal life.”
Symbolically, the baptismal garment and the pall represent yourself being covered in Christ.
Both liturgies place an importance on a lighted Paschal Candle which recalls Christ our light burning in the darkness.
We see a representation of the same candle — Christ the Light — standing at the head of the body at funerals; “may [we] run to meet the Lord when he comes with all the Saints . . .”
There are other examples, but I hope those above place these images into your imagination.
Patrick Gorman is the director of the Office of Worship for the Diocese of Madison.