Funerals as Paschal Remembrance and Incorporation into the Risen Christ

In our contemporary cultural context, the Christian references and the ritual cues no longer work as rites provided by an ecclesiastical institution in the way that they were still able to in the 1960s. The long-term memory which guaranteed the symbolic effectiveness of this rituality has evaporated. The author identifies three ways in which people’s relationship with memory has changed: it is no longer inscribed in time and space; this goes hand in hand with a form of “virtualization” of memory; but especially of its de-institutionalization, meaning that the norms guiding the ritual are no longer founded on an institutional basis linked to a collective memory, but rather on the individual subject and his or her unique character. This is a situation which poses a challenge to the Christian tradition of funerals, precisely because this is founded on a long ritual memory, which is incarnated, and is institutional. One solution to this problem has been to adapt to the expectations and aspirations of our contemporaries by relativizing traditional ritual forms. The author suggests the real question is rather to discern the specifically Christian features of ritualizing death within the long tradition of the Church and identify the elements of this deep Christian “memory” on which certain aspects of the liturgy depend for meaning. Losing this memory would endanger the proclamation of faith and Christian hope. An important source for this rereading is Augustine’s treatise De cura gerenda pro mortuis. It provides the key to interpreting this tradition, thereby enabling a definition of the characteristics of this Christian “memory” which is operative in funerals, and saying how this serves toward building Christian identity. This enables the author to outline the features of a specifically Christian ritualization of funerals for today and the implications for proclaiming a truly paschal faith.