311. Who are funerals for?
311. WHO ARE FUNERALS FOR?
Are funerals for the benefit and comfort of the living, or for the benefit of the dead?
Whether the burial service profits the dead?
Augustine says: The funereal equipment, the disposition of the grave, the solemnity . . . are a comfort to the living rather than a help to the dead.
It was, however, a pagan error that burial was profitable to the dead by procuring rest for his soul, for they believed that the soul could not be at rest until the body was buried, which is altogether ridiculous and absurd. . . . The dead take no harm if their bodies remain unburied. . . .
We have recourse to burial . . . for the sake of the living, lest their eyes be revolted by the disfigurement of the corpse, and their bodies be infected by the stench. . . . [I]t profits the living also spiritually inasmuch as our belief in the resurrection is confirmed thereby.
(However,) it profits the dead in so far as one bears the dead in mind and prays for them through looking on their burial place, wherefore a monument is something that recalls the mind (monens mentem), as Augustine observes. . . .
Moreover, that burial in a sacred place profits the dead does not result from the action done (by the living) but rather from . . . the patronage of some saint by whose prayers we must believe that he is assisted, as well as from the suffrages of those who serve the holy place and pray more frequently and more specially for those who are buried in their midst. . . . [T]hey can profit the dead not directly but indirectly, in so far as men are aroused to pity thereby and consequently to pray. . . . [I]t is in this sense that the burial of the dead is reckoned among the works of mercy (S71,11).
Sacramentalism is not superstition, like the pagan superstition mentioned by St. Thomas, that souls could not rest until their bodies were buried. Divinely instituted sacraments can benefit the dead, but humanly instituted ceremonies, however good they may be and however necessary for the living, cannot of themselves benefit the dead. They are “for us, the living”.
St. Thomas mentions three benefits to the living of the care of dead bodies in funerals. The first is aesthetic: the covering up of the ugliness of decay. The second is hygienic: the prevention of infection. The third is spiritual: an occasion to remember the hope of resurrection.
He also mentions two possible indirect benefits that can accrue to the dead from our care of their dead bodies. First, it reminds us to pray for them. Second, burial in sacred ground is itself a kind of prayer, or an appeal to prayer: both our prayers and the prayers of patron saints. Thus these ceremonies can be sacramental (like holy water) but not sacraments. And therefore they are good works for us to do. In fact they are such an important class of good works that they are mentioned as one of the seven corporal works of mercy.
Prayers at the time and place of death typically carry more spiritual weight because they come from deeper places in the heart, and are more directly and immediately concerned with eternity. Do not miss the opportunity to minister to both the dead and the bereaved on these occasions. Do unto others, both the dead and the bereaved, what you would most want them to do for you when you die and when you are bereaved.