The letter, “In Union With Christ’s Dying and Rising: Our Catholic Funeral Rites as a Sharing in the Paschal Mystery,” was promulgated Feb. 2 and posted to the archdiocesan website, www.aod.org. It will be distributed to parishes in the coming weeks. It can be accessed directly here.

The pastoral letter was released with a twofold purpose, he said: to help the faithful better understand the essential nature of a Catholic funeral,
and to provide practical steps for ways to better incorporate the themes they teach.

Archbishop Vigneron said many people — including Catholics — are tempted to deal with death either in merely human terms that dwell on sadness rather than hope, or through overly simplified means that avoid “making a fuss” over their loved one’s passing. Either temptation misses the “profoundly grace-filled moment” that a proper Catholic funeral can provide, the archbishop said.

“Many Catholics have lost a clear sense about how to face death with faith and hope, about the importance of exercising Christian charity by praying for our beloved dead, and about what it truly means to experience the consolation that only our communion with Jesus Christ can offer,” the letter reads.

Elements in the Catholic funeral rites that evoke images of baptism — such as the sprinkling of holy water over a casket — as well as the reception of Holy Communion tie together the life and death of the deceased with that of Jesus, the archbishop said, so that the faithful can “express in a most powerful way our hope in Christ’s resurrection” and that we too will be raised with him.

Archbishop Vigneron noted that when the priest offers the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, he offers along with it the life of the deceased, so that the two together are presented before the Father, along with the prayers of the faithful for the deceased’s salvation.

And, the archbishop said, Scripture proclaims the efficacy of these prayers.

“Our tradition of burial and praying for the dead is rooted in customs we have inherited from the Old Covenant,” Archbishop Vigneron wrote. “We read in the Second Book of Maccabees, for example, that prayers and sacrifices for the dead are ‘holy and pious’ and can have the power of freeing the dead from their sins.”

Because of this, it’s part of Christian charity to offer and treat a loved one’s death with the care and reverence it deserves, he said. This also includes other elements of Catholic mourning, such as a pre-Mass vigil service in which “prayers, memories and emotions flood our hearts.”

The burial of the dead, which the Church counts as one of the seven corporal works of mercy, is an essential part of this care and trust in God, the archbishop continued. While the Church allows cremation, it must not be done in a spirit that denies faith in the resurrection that’s implied with a normal burial.

“In this we are witnessing to our belief that our bodies are made holy from the moment of Baptism and are destined to rise on the Last Day. While the Church permits cremation when circumstances justify it … cremated remains must always be treated with the same respect the Church accords to the bodies of the deceased, and this includes their reverent disposition in a cemetery” rather than being displayed inside one’s home or carried around. The Church also strongly urges that the deceased’s body be present for funeral rites before cremation, he added.

But while Catholic funeral rites are designed on one hand as a way of shepherding the deceased into the loving embrace of God’s mercy through the prayers and sacrifice of the Mass, they also serve to comfort mourning loved ones, Archbishop Vigneron said.

That’s because “our belief in the communion of saints also gives us the consolation of knowing our prayers are of great benefit to those who have died in Christ and are now undergoing purification in Purgatory, in preparation for the glory of heaven,” he wrote.

Funeral rites are also redemptive for the living, he said, and at the same time allow the Church, “like a good mother,” to console her children in their time of grief and loss.

“Unfortunately, many people today have come to see the Church’s funeral rites as overelaborate and unnecessary,” the archbishop lamented. “As the principal pastor of the faithful here in the Archdiocese of Detroit, I certainly need to acknowledge the often legitimate motivations that prompt concern about matters such as the cost of funerals, but I also need to offer the truth that the funeral rites themselves are essential to the life of the Church, and that these rites ought to be celebrated at the death of every Christian. No Catholic should pass over to the Father without being accompanied by the prayers of the Church.”

The archbishop said pastors and parish staff should work hard to lighten financial or logistical burdens on grieving families, while at the same time calling on the faithful to trust their pastors’ decisions and counsel, especially on spiritual matters.

“For those who believe in Jesus Christ, death and burial are sacred events, in which God draws very near to us and invites us to draw near to him,” he said.

Along with his pastoral letter, the archbishop also released a question-and-answer series designed to help pastors, staff and families better understand the Church’s teachings and practices.