By JAMES MONTI
When reflecting upon the sacredness of all human life, a cemetery is probably not the first thing that comes to our mind. And yet a Catholic cemetery is actually one of the Church’s most profound expressions of this truth by affirming in practice that every human life is so sacred that even the lifeless human body devoid of the soul remains a sacred object. For the body is an essential part of our human nature, it has served in life as the Temple of the Holy Trinity, and it will be restored to us at the end of time.
Moreover, in this day and age when attacks of unprecedented depravity upon marriage and the very identity of man and woman have become rampant, the human body lovingly cherished by the Church in a blessed grave, awaiting the Day of Resurrection, bears witness to the God-given and imperishable sexual identity of each and every man and woman — for a man remains a man for all eternity, and a woman remains a woman for all eternity, a truth that even death cannot change. What God has created, established, and decreed no Supreme Court decision or national referendum has the power to mutilate or annihilate.
There will be those who say we don’t really need to go to the cemetery because, they reassure us, our loved ones “aren’t there,” but rather in Heaven, or at least in Purgatory. Well, the answer to this is Yes and No. Yes, the most important “part” of who we are, the soul, has indeed left this world, but as we have already said the body is also an important albeit subordinate part of who we are as human beings. So when we die, we in a sense do leave “a part of ourselves” behind, merely a physical part it is true, but a part so sacred that God will restore it to us in glory when He comes to judge the world.
We need only turn again to the recently completed U.S. pilgrimage tour of the body of St. Maria Goretti to realize this. Surely those who venerated her relic can attest to having experienced a singularly intense connection with the saint by kneeling beside her body.
When we lose someone close to us, most especially a family member, if we truly love them, we will grieve for them. There will be those who although well-meaning will tell us to “get over it” and “move on,” as if it were wrong to grieve. But Christ taught us as a beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). And when Lazarus died, our Lord, even knowing full well that He was about to raise him, nonetheless wept for him, prompting those present to observe, “See how he loved him!” (John 11:35-36).
Grief, when governed and balanced by faith, hope, and trust in God, can be salutary. In his classic spiritual treatise From Holy Communion to the Blessed Trinity, Fr. Marie-Vincent Bernadot, OP (1883-1941), points out, “We share more fully in the Passion of Christ by grief than by pain” (1931 English edition, p. 79).
There are some truly foolish and vacuous ways of reacting to death, especially in cases when the person who died is only remembered for his or her unbridled pursuit of fun and pleasure. In such cases mourners are exhorted to believe that the highest tribute they can pay to the deceased is to “party on,” to persevere in a mindless pursuit of fun and pleasure because this is what the deceased supposedly would have wanted them to do.
But to react to death in this manner is to be in denial of what has really just taken place. For the deceased, the party is over. Death, rather, should serve as an opportunity for us to come to our senses — to recognize what truly matters in life and in eternity.
The shadow of death proved to be just such a life-changing experience for a carefree young Polish man named Zeno Zebrowski (c. 1891-1982). He had been living away from home, away from the sacraments, recklessly trying out various “get-rich-quick” schemes, ignoring the pleas of his mother begging him to return to her, when at length a vague sense of nostalgia for Christmas with his family finally persuaded him to set out for his village. He stopped at the door of his sister-in-law, only to be told by her that she had just returned from the cemetery following the burial of his mother.
Zeno ran to the cemetery, where upon discovering the freshly dug grave of his mother he broke down and wept. Dropping to his knees, he begged his mother to forgive him for having hitherto turned a deaf ear to her words. Calling to mind her admonition, “If you remember nothing else I’ve taught you, remember it is the Mass that counts” (Fr. Paul Glynn, SM, The Smile of a Ragpicker, Ignatius Press, 2014, p. 84), he promised there and then to return to the sacraments.
Zeno proved better than his word, attending Mass not only on Sundays but daily, and eventually entering the Conventual Franciscan Order. He was one of four friars whom the great 20th-century apostle of Marian consecration St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) chose to accompany him on his daring mission to Japan. When subsequently Fr. Kolbe needed to return to Poland, Friar Zeno remained to continue the work of their Japanese mission. Over the years that followed, Friar Zeno did wonders for the relief of the poor and the promulgation of the Catholic faith in Japan.
The tradition of burying our Catholic dead in sacred ground, in ground blessed by a bishop, had arisen by the sixth century.
By the tenth century the rite of blessing cemeteries had taken a distinctive fivefold format, with a series of five prayers said by the bishop at the center and the four polar extremities (east, south, west, and north, respectively) of the burial ground. In the cemetery consecration ceremony of the Roman Pontifical according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, which is based upon that found in the late 13th-century Pontifical of Durandus, crosses are erected and incensed at each of five stations. Three candles are placed before each cross, which are subsequently lit and then mounted on the top and extremities of the cross. As the bishop walks from one station to another, he sprinkles holy water all about. One of the prayers for this rite (taken here from the 1595-1596 Pontificale Romanum), an especially beautiful text, is sung in the form of a preface:
“It is truly fitting, and just, salutary and right, always and everywhere to give you thanks, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God, through Christ our Lord, who is the Eternal Day, the Light Unfailing, the Splendor Eternal, who has thus commanded those following Him to walk in the light, that they might be able to escape the darkness of eternal night and happily reach the land of light, who by virtue of His humanity wept for Lazarus taken [by death], who by the power of His divinity restored him to life, and has also led back to life mankind buried in a manifold mass of sins.
“Wherefore we suppliantly beseech you, O Lord, that when on the Last Day the trumpets of the angels shall have loudly sounded, those who shall be buried in this cemetery may find you, who are Life eternal, loving and merciful, freed from the bonds of their sins, and rewarded with eternal felicity, and numbered with the multitudes of the saints, that exulting together with all the saints they may praise you, the Author of Life” (pp. 469-472).
Eternal Rest
On a visit to Mount Calvary Cemetery in Valhalla, N.Y., I discovered the following inscription posted beside the door of the cemetery office, words that I subsequently learned are posted in Catholic cemeteries across the U.S.:
“This Catholic cemetery is a holy place. It is blessed by the Church and dedicated to God as a place for worship, prayer and reflection upon divine truth and the purpose of life. It is the resting place until the day of Resurrection for the bodies of [the] faithful departed, once Temples of The Holy Spirit, whose souls are now with God. It is a final and continuing profession of faith in God and of membership in the Church by those who have chosen to be buried with fellow believers of ‘the household of the faith.’ ‘Eternal rest grant them, O Lord’.”
Each year in November the Church reminds us of those who have passed from time to eternity, beginning with the saints on November 1 but immediately followed on November 2 by those in Purgatory who still need our prayers, that they at last may see God. This latter remembrance lingers in the Church’s mind for the rest of November. The Church grants a plenary indulgence to those who devoutly visit a Catholic cemetery (under the usual conditions).
Let us avail ourselves of this opportunity to help our loved ones by visiting their graves as we await the day when we shall join them forever in the Kingdom of God.
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