The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 229: Christian Funerals (2025)

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

In this final episode of Pillar 2, we learn about the Christian funeral rite. Fr. Mike explains how the new life begun in Baptism comes to greater fulfillment as the Christian passes over from this earthly life into the fullness of the Kingdom. The Church, who has sacramentally nourished her children throughout their earthly pilgrimage, upon their death commends them to the Father and places their bodies in the earth to await the resurrection in hope. Each funeral is to end with a farewell to the beloved dead, knowing that we still share communion in Christ and will reunite in our heavenly home. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1680-1690. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family. As we journey together toward our heavenly home, this is day 229. We're reading paragraphs 1680 to 1690, as always. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundation of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com and c.I.Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications today. Day 229, you know what was coming. Here we are. Article 2, the very last paragraphs in column 2. It's called a pillar, not a column. in pillar two of the catechism on how we worship the sacraments, all of this. And today we're going to talk about article two, which is Christian funerals.

And this is just, what an incredible way to conclude. We recognize, remember the sacraments are God's work, right? We get to participate in God's work. And those sacraments, they touch every aspect of our lives, especially those critical aspects, birth and healing and sickness and marriage and joy and death as well. And so today we're going to talk about the role of Christian funerals because that is so important. And I think that there are a number of us who maybe through no fault of our own. We just don't know the significance, don't know the importance of Christian funerals.

So we're diving into that today. Before we do that, let's say a prayer. So Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. And thank you. Thank you for bringing us to this day. Thank you for walking with us and leading us by the guidance of your church through. through what we believe, through how we worship. Thank you for showing us the ways in which you want to be part of our lives.

You want to transform our lives through your sacraments. And you do transform our lives through your sacraments. We come into contact with you and you come into contact with us through your sacraments. Thank you for your Holy Spirit. That makes actual what Jesus made possible. We thank you for this moment. We thank you for this opportunity today. to learn about what every one of us will encounter in death.

We ask you please help us to have minds and hearts that are open to participating in the funerals of those in our parishes, those in our families, those who are dear to us, and help us to understand the significance of life, the significance of death, the significance of eternal life, and how the funeral plays into all of that. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is day 229 we are reading paragraphs 1680 to 1690. Article 2, Christian Funerals.

All the sacraments, and principally those of Christian initiation, have as their goal the last Passover of the child of God, which, through death, leads him into the life of the kingdom. Then, what he confessed in faith and hope will be fulfilled. I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The Christian's last Passover. The Christian meaning of death is revealed in the light of the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ, in whom resides our only hope.

The Christian who dies in Christ Jesus is away from the body and at home with the Lord. For the Christian, the day of death inaugurates at the end of his sacramental life, the fulfillment of his new birth begun at baptism, the definitive conformity to the image of the sun conferred by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and participation in the feast of the kingdom which was anticipated in the Eucharist, even if final purifications are still necessary for him in order to be clothed with the nuptial garment. The church who, as mother, has born the Christian sacramentally in her womb during his earthly pilgrimage, accompanies him at his journey's end in order to surrender him into the father's hands.

She offers to the Father, in Christ, the child of His grace, and she commits to the earth in hope, the seed of the body that will rise in glory. This offering is fully celebrated in the Eucharistic sacrifice. The blessings before and after Mass are sacramentals. The celebration of funerals. The Christian funeral is a liturgical celebration of the church. The ministry of the church in this instant aims at expressing efficacious communion with the deceased, at the participation in that communion of the community gathered for the funeral

and at the proclamation of eternal life to the community. The different funeral rites express the paschal character of Christian death and are in keeping with the situations and traditions of each region even as to the color of the liturgical vestments worn. The Order of Christian Funerals, Ordo Exiquiarum, of the Roman liturgy, gives three types of funeral celebrations, corresponding to the three places in which they are conducted, the home, the church, and the cemetery, and according to the importance attached to them by

the family, local customs, the culture, and popular piety. This order of celebration is common to all the liturgical traditions and comprises four principal elements. The greeting of the community. A greeting of faith begins the celebration. Relatives and friends of the deceased are welcomed with a word of consolation in the New Testament sense of the Holy Spirit's power in hope. The community assembling in prayer also awaits the words of eternal life. The death of a member of the community, or the anniversary of a death, or the seventh or 30th day after death, is an event that should lead beyond the perspectives of this world, and should draw the faithful into the true perspective of faith in the risen Christ. The liturgy of the word during funerals demands very

careful preparation, because the assembly present for the funeral may include some faithful who rarely attend the liturgy and friends of the deceased who are not Christians. The homily in particular must avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy and illumine the mystery of Christian death in the light of the risen Christ. The Eucharistic Sacrifice. When the celebration takes place in church, the Eucharist is the heart of the paschal reality of Christian death. In the Eucharist, the church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed, offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit, the sacrifice of the death and resurrection of Christ, she asks to purify this child of his sins and their consequences, and to admit him to the paschal fullness of the table of the kingdom.

It is by the Eucharist thus celebrated that the community of the faithful, especially the family of the deceased, learn to live in communion with the one who has fallen asleep in the Lord by communicating in the body of Christ of which he is a living member, and then by praying for him and with him. A farewell to the deceased in his final commendation to God by the church. It is the last farewell, by which the Christian community greets one of its members before his body is brought to its tomb. The Byzantine tradition expresses this by the kiss of farewell to the deceased. St. Simeon of Thessalonica wrote,

By this final greeting, we sing for his departure from this life and separation from us, but also because there is a communion and a reunion. for even dead we are not at all separated from one another because we all run the same course and we will find one another again in the same place. We shall never be separated for we live for Christ and now we are united with Christ as we go toward Him. We shall all be together in Christ. All right, there it is paragraphs 1680 to 1690. This conclusion of this second pillar of the catechism on funerals. Now, I just, let's go back to paragraph 1680, the very beginning, where it says all the sacraments, especially those of Christian initiation, right, baptism,

confirmation, holy communion, have as their goal, the last Passover of the child of God, which through death leads him to the life of the kingdom. Isn't that just, that's amazing to realize, I mean, it's not, it's not a shock for all of us who know scripture, who know what baptism is. doesn't St. Paul say those of you who were baptized in his life were baptized into his death, then we realized this. It was through baptism into death that we actually share, participate in God's eternal life. And so always with those sacraments of Christian initiation, it's oriented towards reminding us and participating in the death of Christ so that we can participate in the resurrection of Jesus. And I think, ah, man, I think I've shared the story about when I was maybe one of

my first baptisms of one of my nieces and nephews. In fact, it was at the same time. It was my nephew Max and my niece Molly at the same time. And there's a moment in the baptismal right where the sign of the cross is traced over on the foreheads of forehead of the person to be baptized or the foreheads of the four heads of the people. There's only one forehead of the forehead of the person to be baptized. And it says, I claim you for Christ. And then, you know, the parents and godparents do the same thing. I might have already shared this with y'all. But there's this marking, marking with the sign of the cross we recognize this this person in this case the infant the child is marked by the sign of the cross from early on in their life and they bear that mark of the cross

they bear that sign of the cross through the rest of their life into eternal life remember the cross is the symbol of death the cross is a symbol of destruction the cross is capital punishment of jesus right the execution of jesus it's a sign of suffering it's a sign of sin it's a sign of brokenness, but it's been transformed into also being a sign of hope. And so the sacraments, we're marked with the sign of the cross in the sacraments. We're marked by the death of Jesus in the sacraments because our life is going to be marked by death, right? Our life is going to be marked by suffering.

Our life will be marked by pain and sickness. Our life will be marked by struggle. And so when we are marked with the sign of the cross, it's not just the sign of struggle, not just the sign of sin. It's a sign of hope that here's Jesus, who embraced him. his cross. Here's Jesus who was conquered by his cross and then he conquered his cross, right? He conquered his cross. He was conquered by his cross and led to his death, but then he conquered death and was raised to life. And so everything we do, everything we do is oriented towards

that last moment. Everything we do is oriented towards that moment we step from this life into eternal life. And we realize this. We have to realize this more and more. The second sentence of paragraph 1680 said, then, meaning when we die, then what he confessed in faith and hope will be fulfilled. We even say this in the Nicene Creed on Sundays. I will say the Nicene Creed basically every Sunday and we say, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Do I actually look forward to this? This is the big question. Do I truly look forward not only to the resurrection of the dead where all the dead will rise, but do I look forward to the moment of my death? I know it's not exactly what it says there in the Nicene

creed, but as part of it, in order to rise from the dead, you kind of got to die first. That's part of the whole thing. Do I look forward to that? You know, the mystery, the mystery of the real meaning of Christian death is revealed in the light of the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And then think about this, the Christian meaning of death is revealed when we look at how Jesus died. Yes, it was marked by grief. It was marked by struggle. He's sweating blood in the gardening of the seminy. He says, Father, take this cup from me. So it's not a matter of just being impassive or in the face of death. Here is Jesus who's fully alive and didn't want to die, but embraced his cross with faith and trust in his father. And not only that, embrace his cross and trust and

faith in his father, but also was led through that embrace, through that suffering, through that cross into death, past death, through death, into life. And this is revealed to us. That is the Christian meaning of death. And this is one of the reasons why this last article is all about funerals. One of the things that we forget, one of the things that too many of us forget, we think that the funeral is like a celebration of life. In fact, I remember, oh man, wow, my mom, when she passed away, when she died, she had said before, she said, listen, this is not going to be a celebration of life. She's like, you know, you can celebrate my life. You can be grateful to the Lord for my life, but this is not going to be a celebration of life. She said, this is,

I mean, and again, again, we are grateful to the Lord for a life well lived. We are grateful to the Lord for any amount of life that we get. And so, yes, there's a celebration. But she was saying, but here's the thing, the mass, when we celebrate the mass in a funeral, we're not celebrating it as a celebration of life. We're celebrating the mass to offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist to the father in the sun, by the power of the Holy Spirit for the salvation, for the purification, for the sake of the person who's died, right?

That's one of the reasons why even says very clearly in 1688 that the homily must avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy. Like, it's not just about the person, right? It's not just about like, here's what this person did and here's how they lived and here's how, you know, all their successes or whatever the thing is. It's not a funeral eulogy. The homily illuminates the mystery of Christian death and the light of the risen Christ. The homily invites the congregation to pray on behalf of the person who's in the casket.

Like that is the reality. It's one of the reasons why the funeral mass is so, so important because we recognize. that most likely the person who has passed away, the person whose funeral it is, needs our prayers. Most likely the person whose funeral it is, if they died, even if they died in friendship with the Lord, right, died in a state of grace, they will need the mass to be offered up for them for that purification of the consequences of their sins. In fact, it says this in paragraph 1689, it says that in offering, the offering the Eucharist, the church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit the sacrifice

of the death and resurrection of Christ. She asks to purify his child of his sins and their consequences. That's what's happening here at the funeral mass is so, so vital. And that's one of the reasons why not only is it important to be at the funeral mass, to offer up that sacrifice, but it's also important to ask for masses to be offered for on behalf of the dead, that we have an intention for each mass and that intention to be like, you know, if you have someone you love who has passed away, to be able to contact your parish and ask if a mass could be offered or masses, multiple masses, could be offered on behalf for the sake of their soul. Because I know how often in the face of death, we realize we can't stop it. How often in the face of death we realize,

there's nothing more I can do, right? It's easy to feel incredibly powerless. But we're not powerless. As Catholics, we are not powerless. We can still pray. We can pray our rosaries for the dead. We can pray the chaplain of divine mercy for the dead. We can pray the stations at the cross for the dead. And we can have the mass be offered for the dead. That is an incredibly efficacious, right? That word, the church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed. It does something. It helps them. And especially when we feel powerless in the face of death, there's nothing more I can do. Or maybe even. Maybe even there was a lack of reconciliation with that person that died. Maybe there was like, I didn't love them well during when they were alive. And we can have a lot of

regret for that. We can have a lot of remorse over that. And that's fine. That's natural. That's normal. But we can also translate that and transform that into prayer. We can transform that into doing something, loving them well now by having the mass offered for them. Loving them well now by offering our rosary for them. Loving them well now by offering all those other sacramental all those other devotions on their behalf. We are not ever powerless. And the funeral rights that the church gives to us, they're a sign of God's power

and we get to participate in his power. Now, last two things. One is kind of trivia, I think in some ways trivia, and the other is just beauty. It says in paragraph 1685, it says the funeral rights express the paschal character of Christian death and are in keeping with the situations and traditions of each region, even as to the color of the liturgical vestments worn.

So that's just kind of a thing. You can wear black vestments. You can wear white vestments at a funeral. And I know many people who would, many of our students, my mom, as Ed also asked this, she wanted black vestments to be worn at her funeral, not because she didn't believe in the resurrection of Jesus, not because she didn't believe in hope and in all of the goodness. But she, as a sign, she wanted black vestments be worn as a sign of, no, pray for me. Let this be a sign that is in the celebration of life, as I said.

It is, this is a prayer. We're offering worship to the father on behalf of my soul, she's asking us, which is awesome. But also white can be worn. Now, there are certain regions. I've heard this that in Asia, or I don't know if it's across the board in Asia, which is a very large landmass, but in the many, many cultures there. But in some cultures in Asia, white. is the color of mourning. In those cultures, we could wear white as a color of mourning, or they could avoid wearing white because in that culture it would have a different connotation as kind of a,

again, a little trivia there for you. One of the things we recognize is the corporal work of mercy to bury the dead. Going back to the book of Tobit, that's one of the things that Tobit knew he could do, even though he was exiled away from the land of the chosen people of God, away from the promised land. He was exiled into Assyria. He could still bury the dead. He could still bury his dead brothers and sisters in Judaism. And so those people who spend their lives, those people who serve the church and serve others by the ministry of taking care of the dead. And those, even those people in parishes who, they're the people who put on the funeral lunch, or they're the people who serve at the funeral masses.

They're the people who accompany the family. You're even people who work in funeral homes. They're doing a great act, a great work of charity, work of mercy. And we get to be part of that too. Every time we pray for the dead, we're participating in some way in that. And of course, we do this with hope. Yes, our hearts can be broken, but we do this with hope. I love that last quote from St. Simeon of Thessalonica.

says about that final greeting where we say goodbye as that person's body's placed in the tomb. I don't know if you've ever been in that place. That can be such a powerful moment because you realize I can know this person is dead, but as I walk away, their bodies lowered into the earth. And there's this, there's what seems like an even more definitive goodbye. There's the goodbye at death. But then there's something about that farewell in the funeral right. that is even feels, feels even more like a definitive goodbye. So St. Simeon talking about this, he says,

you know, we sing for this person's departure from this life and separation from us. So that's a song of mourning, but also because there is a communion and a reunion. For even dead, we are not at all separated from one another because we all run the same course and we will find one another again in the same place. We shall never be separated for we live for Christ. And now we are reunited. We are united with Christ as we go toward him. We shall all be together in Christ. And in the Holy sacrifice of the Eucharist, holy sacrifice of the Mass, we once again, every time we go to the mass, we are participating in the great worship of heaven and our loved ones who are in heaven, God willing. We get to participate in the exact same event just in different ways. And so we see each other in

the Eucharist, whether in this life and we're just separated, or whether in this life and the next, we always will see each other in the Eucharist. Anyways, I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name's Father Mike, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.