Now, officially, the rosary-the-night-before-the-funeral went out with the Vatican II reforms. A very nice Vigil service has been designed. I've been to those Vigils a couple of times, organized by eager, informed priests for families who had no real sense of what should happen at/around a funeral. (I was there not as a mourner so much as parish staff.)
I remember gently suggesting the Vigil instead of the rosary for my mom's funeral. Not to put too fine a point on it: hell, no. What WE do when people die is we pray the rosary.
So, it was good tonight to pray the rosary for Chad, and to have a sense that I joined with people in something of a "virtual" collective rosary for him. It was also bittersweet to remember those losses that have hit me closer to home, but to keep plugging through, praying the same prayer.
The rosary--especially its backbone the "Hail Mary"--really is the perfect prayer in the face of death. You find yourself repeating over and over the request that Mary "pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." There is nothing like a death to make that line stand out, and I heard it each time I said it but for Chad, for those deaths past, and for my own death coming at some future time that I don't know yet.
I know that sounds a little ... morbid, a community of death or something. But I actually don't mean it like that at all. I'm really convinced that the good news of Christ in the midst of death is that love is stronger than death, and that the way that gets best embodied for us is in the love of the Christian community in the face of death. We offer love, and prayers, and that gentle reminder that the last enemy to be defeated is death. The love of Christ conquers all.
1 comment:
great post DLD
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