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"Well, do you want to see a drama, a musical or a comedy?"

The group of us were heading to New York City for a Broadway show. Tony's father had recently died, so I was trying to prod the group toward something light.

"The King and I?" No, I thought, the father dies in the end. "Titanic?" No, not with all those people drowning.

"The Lion King" it was. Everyone agreed - and no one remembered that the father, Mufasa, dies - or, rather, is set up for death by a stampede arranged by his brother, Scar.

As the stampede began, Tony was upset. I later apologized - but, on further reflection, I realized that no piece of storytelling of any value does not, at some point, deal with death.

From the plays of Sophocles and Euripides to the Passion settings of Johann Sebastian Bach, the operas of Verdi and Puccini to the plays of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, O'Neill and Miller, down to Harry Potter, death is always present.

I believe it is the presence of death that gives these works their greatest value and draws us to them. It is death that penetrates to the core of life, since death is necessary for life.

Jesus taught, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit" (John 12:24). In the spiritual life arising from the Gospels, death precedes life. A death is at the heart of our Christian story - the crucifixion of Jesus - and the deaths of family members and friends are at the heart of our personal stories.

On the second of November each year, the feast of All Souls, when the natural world is dying and becoming barren, the Christian Church remembers her dead - whom we pray for at every Mass, for we are always grieving at some level in our souls.

This grieving is something to be embraced and not avoided if there is to be healing and new life. Thus, Christians embrace the cross.

My observations over the last 30 years as a priest, though, give me cause for concern. Catholic Christians, like American culture in general, while steeped in images and realities of death from video games and entertainment news to war and disease, are avoiding death - masking grief and unwilling to simply to be sad because it is an appropriate and necessary feeling.

Fewer and fewer Catholics are having a funeral Mass to pray for their dead. Often, there is just a brief service at the funeral home or graveside. Often, these truncated rites are accompanied by balloon releases or the presence of teddy bears, but no Eucharist.

Why? One reason may be that family members responsible for the burial have left the Church or are not believers. The Eucharist and prayers for the dead have no meaning for them.

The term "funeral Mass" has been commonly replaced by "memorial Mass" or "a celebration of a person's life." Have the word and concept of "funeral" become inappropriate? Why are we displacing the crucified and risen Christ from the heart of our funeral rites with memories and stories of our loved ones?

There is a place for those stories, but what has happened to praying: "Eternal rest grant them, O Lord...." "Deliver them, O Lord...." What or who is at the heart of your experience of death and mourning? Do you believe Jesus has delivered us from death?

Funeral liturgies are often put off because the timing is not convenient for the family. One man put off his mother's funeral for weeks because "Mother would want me to go on vacation."

Cremation, though allowed by the Catholic Church, has more and more replaced bringing a body to church. It is this act in which the body, the dwelling place of the spirit, is honored in the presence of the community and the eucharistic Lord.

Do you consider the body sacred? Do you believe the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies? Do you believe in the resurrection of the body as well as the soul - or is the body something that can easily be discarded, as we scatter cremated remains over a garden or in the sea?

I don't know exactly what "resurrection of the body" entails. Scripture and Catholic tradition struggle with words and images like "glorified body." We proclaim Mary was "assumed body and soul into heaven," and, "Jesus was transfigured before them." The angel announces that "He is risen" - a body clothed with the sun and crowned with stars, dazzling white (Rev 12:1, Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36).

Whatever the experience of a resurrected body is, Christians believe our whole person - which includes our body - will be taken up and glorified. Thus, our funeral rites center on the body of the person, which is blessed, covered in the white pall of baptism and incensed, because the body is holy and will be taken up by God.

There is now the expectation that we are to prepare our own funeral services. These overly-personalized liturgies, in my experience, often become expressions of personality rather than expressions of the Christian community's faith and trust in God in the face of death.

What has happened to the most ancient and sacred of duties: to bury the dead? From where did the idea arise that we need to spare our family from this sacred duty? We seem to be trying to spare people from grief, sadness and mourning. In so doing, are we not avoiding death ourselves and depriving others of the needed path toward healing?

In the earliest centuries, Christians were recognized in the Greco-Roman Empire as distinctive because of how we dealt with the poor, sick and dead. Christians embraced these people, rather them pushing them to the margins of society or memory. Are we distinctive today?

As we remember our dead and pray for them, it is, as the liturgy proclaims, truly right and just to feel sad, cry, share stories and listen to stories, no matter how many years it's been.

Sophocles, Bach, Shakespeare, Williams and J.K. Rowling know that through grief and sadness come healing and new life. Why have contemporary women and men seemed to have forgotten this necessary part of life?

Requiem aeternam....Eternal rest, grant onto our sisters and brothers, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them. May they rest...and may we rest...in your peace.

(Father Mickiewicz is pastor of St. Mary's parish in Oneonta.)[[In-content Ad]]

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