The Mystery of Death and Christian Funerals - #16

I have always been fascinated by the Latin word refrigerium. This is the root for the English word refrigerator. It refers to a shaded, cool and refreshing place. The Romans associated the word with cemeteries where they buried their loved ones. Those who practiced the native Roman religion honored their dead by maintaining close ties with them. Relatives frequented their tombs and rested in the cool loveliness of their cemeteries.. Pope Damasus, great patron of the catacombs, replaced the cemetery system of late-ancient Rome with an alternate Christian cemetery system. He did this with money donated by wealthy Christian widows. (Others dubbed him the auriscalpius matronarum, the ear-tickler of noble ladies! (This is a bit of Catholic trivia that I know you'd want to have.!) When Christians visited the tombs of their beloved dead, they joined in communion with saintly relatives and the friends of God. Christian cemeteries became the abode of Christian saints and martyrs. Their tombs were fitting places where the living could gather to share in a memorial Eucharist. They called it the refrigerium. We have hints of this in the prayer that remembers the dead in the Roman Eucharistic prayer. "May these and all who sleep in Christ find in your presence light, happiness, and peace." May our dead rest in a refrigerium.

In The Sacred Remains Gary Laderman traces attitudes and mores surrounding death and burial in 19th century America. Our forebears etched their faith onto monuments, gravestones, and statuary in rural and urban cemeteries. (Eudora Welty, the famous fiction writer, photographed southern graveyards in Country Churchyards.) Tourists today still go on pilgrimage and visit historic burial sites. Their cameras capture the fading scripts and the weathered symbols carved into old markers. A few culture-consumers stop long enough to abide in the coolness or to picnic on sandwiches with dark fillings. Later, safely ensconced in gated and guarded neighborhoods, they page through photobooks of halcyon New England cemeteries and whisper their tales about the dead.

We have a long history with cemeteries. We approach them respectfully because, as part of God's good creation and as burial places for Christians, they are holy. Here is where we gather for the rite of committal, the conclusion of the funeral rites and "the final act of the community of faith in caring for the body of its deceased will rise again. It connects the church on earth with the church in heaven.

The rite is simple: an invitation, a verse from scripture, and a prayer over the place of committal. It then continues with the words of committal, intercessions, and the Lord's Prayer. It ends with a prayer over the people. "The act of committal is a stark and powerful expression of (the) separation" of those who mourn from the deceased (#213). The rite marks the end of one relationship and the beginning of a new one "based on prayerful remembrance, gratitude, and the hope of resurrection and reunion. By their presence and the prayer members of the community signify their intention to continue to support the mourners in the time following the funeral (#213)."