A couple of months ago, I read a book by Scott Hahn, called Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body. Reading this book, it was a great reminder that the body is sacred and it matters not only during life, but also after death. The book explores the history and tradition of caring for the body after death and discusses the importance of burial from the Catholic perspective. Properly caring for and burying the dead indicates our belief in the resurrection. We often see a disregard for the Church’s teaching surrounding proper care for the body after death and can see around us a general lack of understanding.
When I read this book back in November, it was not even one week after I finished reading that I saw a strange news story come across in my social media feed regarding an urn with ashes. An urn containing the cremated remains of someone was found in a Wisconsin movie theater. A follow up to the original story revealed that the woman brought the ashes and left them behind intentionally, as she wanted to get rid of the ashes because she had no close relationship with the person. Not long after this, my mom came home from work one evening and told me about a situation with a resident at the assisted living facility she works at. One of the residents had died a few days prior and upon going through some of his stuff that was in the basement at the facility, her manager found ashes of who she assumed to be the resident’s wife. Then, the staff found out that the ashes were not the resident’s wife, but belonged to who they figured was a girlfriend of the resident. It almost seems like an ash mix-up, not knowing who is who. Additionally, a few years ago, I had a co-worker who wore her husband’s ashes in a necklace and came into work distraught one day because she had “lost her husband” (the necklace with his ashes had fallen off somewhere between her home and the office). And just within the last week, I heard about someone who got a tattoo that used some ashes of a family member in the ink. All of these situations show disrespect for the body and also show a lack of awareness of the dignity of the human person.
Cremation is permitted by the Church, but there is a proper way that it must be done. Cremated ashes cannot sit on someone’s fireplace mantel or be spread across a field or treated in any ways listed in the above paragraph. As stated in Order of Christian Funerals: Appendix on Cremation, a person’s ashes must be “treated with the same respect given to the human body from which they come.. The cremated remains should be buried in a grave or entombed in a mausoleum or columbarium” (no. 417). With cremation becoming more and more popular and widespread, it is important that Catholics know and are aware of the proper way to honor and respect their loved ones after they have died.
As people who believe in the resurrection, all that we do should express our belief in the resurrection. Catholics must profess and respond to the death of loved ones in a way that says that the body is not disposable and that the body matters not just in life, but also after death.
Faith and The Good Stuff 