“But the beast was captured, and the false prophet with him who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf…The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of sulphur” (Revelation 19:20)
Contemporary challenges to traditional Orthodox Christian funeral and burial rules and customs cause problems for us priests. Nowadays people ask to be cremated; the Church forbids that way of disposing human remains. We argue: That defies the Church’s teachings; and we hear that the Roman Catholic Church now permits cremation, as though that blessing includes us. Orthodox Christians are considered Catholic Lite. I prefer not just to repeat the rule of the Church or say that the bishop forbids cremation, end of story. I use Joan Rivers’ line: “Can we talk?” The answer is often to demur. They have made up their minds, they know what I’ll say, and it’s not “No problem.” Their arguments—cremation is cheaper, no fuss over a wake, burial and the ritual post-internment repast. Dispose of the body, it no longer has value. It’s the new post-Christian way.
I try again. “Since this has to do with the transition from life to life everlasting, will you at least accompany me if I arrange for you to witness an actual cremation?” I had the experience only once in my New York City years. I was called by a funeral director to provide, as he put it, “your religion’s normal death ritual” to a wife and grown daughter who were not believers; however, their husband and father, an Orthodox believer from Germany had a stroke while on vacation in America. I thought of Bunin’s classic short story, The Gentleman from San Francisco, which describes with humor something like this sad situation. The women had made arrangements for him to be cremated in order to take his remains back home for burial. I went that evening to offer a funeral service together with pastoral healing. The scene was like an Ingmar Bergman movie—two tall blond women in black, framing a stark coffin. No flowers, no mourners, so unlike a conventional mortician’s scene. Funerals are or can be epiphanies of hope announcing the kingdom of heaven.
Speaking with the wife and feeling their despondency, I offered to accompany them to the crematorium in New Jersey. That experience is a stark austere shock imbedded in my memory from a half century ago. The coffin was a papier-mâché box containing the corpse. One hears the hollow rushing sound a hurricane makes, which signals the gas ovens firing up. The coffin is on rollers, slowly moving towards a short asbestos curtain hiding the viewers from the white heat of the furnace beyond, much like the canvas strips through which one’s suitcase emerges at the airport’s luggage return—only the coffin goes through the portal, unlike the luggage carousel.
What else is there to say if I am to persuade the cremation advocates to change their minds? If they were an integral part of the parish, they would see how meaningful visits to the cemetery of loved ones can be. They have the therapeutic function of uniting the survivors with the recollection of their loved ones. Parishioners often visit the plots where the departed lie in repose. They tend the earth; they plant flowers and potted plants. They fly little flags for veterans on Memorial Day, they announce the risen Lord on Thomas Sunday, and if they are spiritually advanced, they imbibe the aura of serenity that embraces the believer and unites them with the spirits of their beloved departed.
I thought to remind them of the euphoria that overwhelmed Boston and all New England when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. In 1918 the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. The Boston team never won the Series until 2004. In that year all Massachusetts went wild. They visited their cemeteries with flowers, balloons and signs to share the joy with their beloved who had wanted to live for that glorious event but didn’t make it. I thought it an argument for burying Cleveland’s Orthodox Christians so that the descendants of the Indians fans could emulate the Red Sox. They could insist that their children plant Wahoo banners on their graves the year the Indians win the World Series, or even to pass the vow to their grandchildren. Until that happens, I would have my wish for conventional burials.