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| Death: Our Birth into Eternal life
Damian Lenshek |
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.
One of the saddest situations I encounter is when a daily Mass attendee, after decades of devotion, dies and does not receive a Catholic funeral or burial.
Usually, this happens when the deceased’s children are not practicing Catholics and, either through ignorance or rejection of the Faith, do not seek a funeral Mass for their devout parent.
Pastors have told me that they sometimes only find out weeks after someone stops coming to Mass that they died suddenly, and the family for whatever reason did not contact the parish or seek a Catholic funeral.
Having family that you can rely on to pray for you upon your death is a gift, and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Prayers for the dead
Catholics generally want people to pray for them after their deaths, that they be brought speedily through any suffering needed to expiate sin (i.e., Purgatory) to the full joy of the kingdom of God.
That is why many early medieval kings set up endowments so that Masses would be said for them, often daily, in perpetuity.
In the 12th century, King Henry II of England, for example, provided for at least one Mass per day for himself by giving property to the Cistercians.
Recalling the king’s role in the murder of St. Thomas Becket, it is no wonder that he was concerned about the fate of his soul at death. The Masses King Henry endowed presumably continued until 1547, when the land and money associated with this, and more than 2,000 other endowed Masses, were seized by the Crown.
This “Abolition of Chantries Act” was just one of the tragedies of the Reformation in England.
But my point is that Catholics have a history of ensuring that prayers will be said for them after death.
The dead have little in the way of rights. “Last wishes,” while powerfully sentimental, have no legal binding force unless they are in a will or some other legal document.
But there are steps we can take to make it more likely that we will receive the funeral rites that our baptism entitles us to, and that benefit us so much upon death.
Steps you can take
The first step is to make your plans. Check to see whether your parish offers assistance in planning your funeral.
If not, you can download a funeral planning guide from www.madisondiocese.org/funeral
As you go through the funeral planning guide, you will be prompted to record any cemetery plans you have already made, the name of a funeral home that you prefer, and other key information that your family should know but maybe hasn’t come up in recent conversations.
Once you have them set forth in writing, tell your family about your plans, and let them know where to find your written plans in case of necessity.
Tell more than one person in your family, if you can, so that on the worst day of their lives, there will be a better chance that someone will remember where you put your plans.
Discussing your wishes in a straightforward way can also be an opening for conversation about the Faith with your fallen-away family members.
Having this discussion is also a good way to get a sense for whether your family members are like-minded or not.
If you have no family members you can trust to have a Catholic funeral for you, you might want to pick a friend to be executor.
Another step you can take is to make your plans easy to execute. I don’t have a formal study to prove it, but my strong hunch is that if you let your family know your wishes, and pay ahead for your funeral and burial, your wishes are more likely to be honored.
Taking care of the financial aspects ahead of time eliminates the need for your family to make potentially expensive decisions in a hurry while grieving.
You could also, like a medieval king, set aside some of your estate for the purpose of prayers for yourself. It doesn’t have to be a large chunk of your estate!
Talk to your parish priest about the normal Mass offering. Then multiply by the number of Masses you would like. Three, 33, and 30 are traditional numbers of Masses to be offered for the deceased.
Damian Lenshek is the director of cemeteries for the Diocese of Madison.