November is the month traditionally dedicated by the Church to prayer for the faithful departed. The liturgy in the last weeks of Ordinary Time (as well as the first half of Advent) assumes a decidedly eschatological cast: Death, judgment and eternity are all prominent themes. So is “being ready.”

That’s why I was recently struck by an ad from a group of Catholic funeral planners announcing: “Many Catholics don’t care where they’re going when they die.” 

No, it wasn’t an effort to suggest indifference about the “Last Things,” but it did note that growing numbers of Catholics are foregoing traditional burial. Catholic acceptance of cremation is growing by leaps and bounds. 

I can attest to this trend with two anecdotes. An elderly relative died in 2012; her urn still graces another relative’s dining room table. And when I wrote an article about Catholics and cremation two years ago, it elicited some heated replies.

The primary criticism was financial: My respondents asked if I really knew how much a funeral costs these days. Even my relative could not see spending $500 just to open a grave to lay an urn in it.

Catholics seem to be opting for cremation for a variety of reasons. Money is one. So is a certain environmentalism: Isn’t cremation more environmentally sensitive and a testimony to our footprint in the earth? “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ...”

The repeal of ecclesiastical prohibitions against cremation hasn’t helped either. The Church, once upon a time, forbade cremation because it wanted to combat those who were using it to make a statement in denial of the resurrection of the body. By incinerating themselves, those materialists wanted to defy God: “Here, Almighty One, put this back together.” When cremation ceased primarily to be a statement of a false worldview and in some places became preferred because of the scarcity of land, the Church rescinded her ban, all the while still reminding Catholics that while cremation was not now forbidden, Catholics should be buried in hallowed ground. They, like their Lord, should rest in the earth.

Unfortunately, like the modification of Friday abstinence, many people heard only part of the message, not all of it. They heard the repeal of the ban; they ignored the recommendation.

November might be an appropriate time for priests to remind people of what broadcaster Paul Harvey liked to call “the rest of the story.”

We need to remind people of a “theology of the body” that regards the deceased human body as sacred. The body is a part of whom the person was and will be (we declare — every Sunday — our belief not in the “eternal life of the soul,” but in the “resurrection of the body”).

The body, once the temple of the Holy Spirit and destined one day to rise, is not just some wrapper to be discarded. It is not a husk of which we are free, a “vegetable” shell from which death “releases us.” (The euthanasia movement is very Gnostic). Nor is the body just “dust and ashes” to be “in solidarity with the earth.” 

Man is not just matter: He is matter infused with the Spirit of God, breathed into the clay God formed, “and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). This is not just some more dust, nor is it “recyclable” by scattering at your favorite seaside, mountain or I-95 rest stop.

This is dust that once (and will) breathed the Spirit of God — and that is why the Church teaches that cremated remains must be buried and the dignity of life respected, not kept on the mantle. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body” (2301).

So, as we pray for the deceased —“a holy and wholesome thought” — let us also recall the old maxim, “As you are, I was; as I am, you will be.” 

Aware that we, too, will one day be the object of others’ November prayers, it is an appropriate moment also to take stock of my preparation for death in a time when even large numbers of the Church seem confused about its significance.  It is a good time to make or update that will, if needed. It is also worthwhile to ensure that provision is made for not just my funeral, but my Christian burial. It is a holy and wholesome thought, too, to devote some attention to planning that inevitable event, be it deciding where one will be buried (with emphasis on buried), perhaps buying a grave, or at least surveying the various options for funeral planning and the Mass of Christian burial. Priests should consider devoting some attention in their November homilies or parish bulletins to these and other questions. 

Given the images presented in the media and the surveys of Catholic practice, we cannot ignore them.

In November, leaves fall. (In most Slavic languages, the name for November is actually etymologically derived from “falling leaves.”) 

St. Josémaria Escriva once wrote that, just as the autumn leaves fall, so, every day, souls fall into eternity. 

A worthy consideration amidst the November signs of the times.

 

John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) was formerly associate dean of

the School of Theology at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.