I did attend today, and I’m glad that I did: Nine years ago, I lost my own father at Christmastide; the funeral itself was on Christmas eve morning. I vowed to myself that I would never, ever avoid offering my presence as support if a friend had a loved one who died at Christmastime. I can’t begin to share how painful that was, and how much sheer will I’ve exerted in the interim years to not let that unhappy event ruin Christmas for me and those around me. AMDG, as I’ve learned in the Spiritual Exercises.
In any case, it was a most reverent service; it was in a language I do not understand a word of, perhaps Aramaic, being that the deceased was from Syria. I found the presence of the body in an open casket for the first part of the service a little startling, and witnessing the family’s sheer grief wrenched my heart as well as made me feel a little voyeuristic. To my decidedly American mind, that seems like too intimate a time to be shared by strangers. The display of grief may have been a middle eastern cultural feature, I’ve been used to American funerals where the mourners are not visibly as bereft and sobbing. My husband’s friend, the eldest son of the family, however, was very American and “stiff upper lip” about it. I did get a chance to pull him aside later, though, and he told me what an effort it was to be strong for the sake of his mother and sisters.
I had guessed correctly about the incense, those of you who have heard me hold forth about it know I’m pretty allergic to it. I took an antihistamine and sat well in the back of the church. Fortunately, it is a pretty modern construction, with an efficient HVAC system, and I only got a few whiffs (it did smell complex and heavenly,) and did not react to it.
Of course, I was impressed by the iconography and stained glass. Being a modern church, these were of very realistic depiction, not gothic or arabesque, as I had expected. It was odd, though, to see the altar completely screened for a good part of the service. When they finally did open the screen to the altar, there was a large mural behind the altar, on what would correspond to the redros in a Catholic church. One thing had struck me as pretty odd, though–a depiction of an angel in the sky holding a very thin Orthodox cross. Unfortunately, it looked as if the angel was holding an old fashioned television antenna. True to form, my Lutheran husband managed to doze off a couple of times during the liturgy, which was pretty long (I think about an hour and forty five minutes,) but since he was not snoring, I let him do so.
There is nothing more dismal than standing near an open grave on a dank, overcast, thirty-eight degree December day, but I did go (having had the good foresight to have brought my waterproof gardening clogs with me in the car.) To my mind, again, being an American Catholic, where mercifully, we don’t freeze next to a grave for half an hour or so, it was a little protracted, but again, very reverent. We then dispersed to the funeral brunch.
At the funeral brunch, some of the eldest son’s colleagues, including us, were seated at the same table the clergy was at. I used the occasion to keep my eyes and ears open, and asked a few questions about the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. We had a lively but respectful conversation, I was a little surprised to realize that they consider us in schism, and I asked that he join me in a prayer to the effect that the wounds in the Body of Christ be healed, and soon. He composed such a prayer on the spot, and all at our table appeared very edified by that.
If one considers funerals spiritually enlarging, it was an interesting cultural and spiritual experience. Please pray for our friend and his family as they start life without their dear father’s presence on earth, and please pray for the persecuted church, whether it be Orthodox or Catholic, in Syria. They are our spiritual kinsmen, right there near where Christianity all began, and deserve our prayers and good thoughts.
