"Consolation" might be described as "offering comfort in time of grief or distress." It is the response of one person to the direct or indirect appeal by another. Yet, in consoling another, the consoler must leave the other free to accept or refuse the consolation offered. It is only when the other accepts the offer of consolation that true consolation occurs. As with the Pastoral Care of the Sick, the Order of Christian Funerals (OCF) places responsibility for the ministry of consolation with the entire believing community, according to the time and talents of each Christian, and in relation to the role or office each has in the church.
This ministry takes many forms: words of faith and support extended to the bereaved or various acts of kindness and help, but, as the OCF states, the "community's principle involvement...is expressed in its active participation in the celebration of the funeral rites..."
It is important to focus on this particular kind of ministry, especially in the context of large urban and suburban parishes in this country where fewer and fewer people know each other, where bonds of friendship are more restricted, where individualism and privatism are on the increase. Without many human bonds the loss of a beloved is ritualized in the hallow atmosphere of near empty churches, with nothing but thin voices of faith. The OCF asks the local parish to become more involved in these moments of separation by surrounding those who mourn with a Christian community of faith, a community supporting them by prayer and service.
As our culture continues to separate and divide us, this ministry will become all the more crucial. However, Christians who minister consolation to the bereaved do so in the context of their own faith. Those who console must be at home with an understanding of death that is rooted In the Paschal Mystery of Christ: his own life-giving death- resurrection for the sake of all (no. 1). Christians believe that through Christ's death the power of death is broken for all who believe. Just as the death of Jesus resulted in his resurrection and new life, so the death of the faithful Christian brings the hope and promise of new life for that person as well.
Our faith as Christians is, moreover, bound up with our membership in the church. The church is the community of the faithful who hold fast to the promise of the Lord and who continue Christ's mission and ministry in the world. The church is the visible sign of Christ's continuing presence in the power of the Spirit of God. Christ's Paschal Mystery is the source of the church's identity and the challenge for its own human operation (no. 2). The process of baptism-confirmation, which Incorporates us into the body of Christ, also initiates us into the church.
This paschal life in Christ and in the church provides the foundation for the church's ministry when one of its members dies (nos. 4-10). United in the paschal life of the Lord, the church, the new people of God, reaches out in love and care. Its spirit is the very Spirit of God; its hands and feet are the numerous men and women in the church who are willing to respond to God's call to ministry. The ministry of consolation calls for ~he church as a whole to recognize its relationship to those of Its members who have died, to keep them in loving memory, and to take care of the bereaved.
Participating in funerals of others is healthy, not ghoulish. Psychologists tells us that no one, not even the young, should be "spared" this :experience. Death is a reality of life for everyone. It is the horizon upon which life is lived. Death puts life, goals, and values in perspective. Life is not for individual gain or convenience, but for the good of all. Life is neither a solitary endeavor nor one that uses others as objects; it is for the communion of persons, of I and Thou, of love and friendship and fidelity, of hope that we are more because of our love for each other. The ministry of consolation incarnates these values at the moment one of us ceases to live on this earth. And sharing consolation is the context in which the funeral rites are to be celebrated.
These rites, like those for the dying, seek to provide a social and religious structure through which former relationships can be ended and new relationships can be established (no.6). For family and friends the rites provide a means for expressing sorrow and prayer, for saying goodby, and for beginning the long process of reintegration and orientation. For the church, the rites express its belief that life does not end with death. Through their celebration the church itself grows m faith and hope, and acknowledges the Paschal Mystery of Christ lived out in the passing-over of one of its own. For the deceased, the rites provide a means whereby prayer can be offered to a merciful and caring God.
But the funeral rites work no magic. Without people of faith the rites of the church make no sense. None of the rituals will assure salvation in and of themselves; God is not forced to hear words without meaning or gestures without intent. Rites in the hands of the unchurched seem mysterious at best, superstitious at worst; only rites in the hands of the faithful seem fitting. The rites are the guidelines, the structures, by and through which the assembly prays.
The pastoral care that was offered to the dying. Christian and this person's family and friends by the church is now the ministry of consolation offered to these same bereaved. Caring pastorally for the bereaved is offering them consolation. The care providing context begun m Illness and dying IS continued in death, gradually extending more and more. to the family and friends till, at the death of the beloved one, Its now focuses squarely on them. To miss this frame of understanding is to view death as but an isolated moment rather tan part of a much larger human.and organic reality m which people's lives are intertwined m living and dying, and. the focus of pastoral care shifts accordingly. This larger reality is the normal reality of the local churches, the normal reality of life lived in city or town or country. How, then, can the assembly of believers best plan and assist at the funeral rites of one of its members so as­­ faith and hope, to offer love and consolation?





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