Can a deacon say the graveside prayers after a Requiem Mass

[dividus]

I’ve been searching for an answer to this question since January when my mom passed. The parish priest stayed at the church and the deacon accompanied us to the cemetary where he said the prayers over the grave.

 

[Oneofthewomen]

Yes, a deacon can do this. In my diocese, this is typical.
I am curious as to why you would think it was a problem and why you just didn’t ask your priest back in January when it happened?

 

[dividus]

To tell the truth, losing my mom has hit me harder than anything else that has happened to me in my life. I’ve been obsessing about a lot of things concerning her over the past six months, and this is one of them.
I read recently that if she’d had a Traditional (Latin) Requiem, the priest would have been at the graveside. Also, when my dad was buried, the priest came to the graveside after Mass.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I’ve been searching for an answer to this question since January when my mom passed. The parish priest stayed at the church and the deacon accompanied us to the cemetary where he said the prayers over the grave.

I am very sorry for the loss of your mother. The loss of a parent is a very tremendous loss.

As an ordained cleric, the Deacon most assuredly can preside at the graveside service and bless the grave. He can also preside at the Vigil Service and the Funeral Liturgy Outside Mass, if that form of the Funeral Rites is chosen…just as the Deacon can preside at Baptisms, Marriages or their convalidation, Communion Services as well as Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and Solemn Celebrations of the Liturgy of the Hours. He can preside at Liturgies of the Word and other services of public prayer. He may impart blessings, according to the norms established in the Book of Blessings, and confer sacramentals.

I was very grateful when I was fortunate enough to have a Deacon as they provide much needed help. Being able to send him for the graveside services, which he could do every bit as much as I, could allow me to take the emergency call to anoint someone, which only I could do.

The apportion of pastoral work depended upon what the Deacon was free to assume. For transitional deacons completing their pastoral year, it was important for them to have a complete rotation. On the other hand, permanent deacons can have work and family responsibilities…or not. I have worked with some who had retired from their secular work and they were full time in ministry.

 

[dividus]

I am very sorry for the loss of your mother. The loss of a parent is a very tremendous loss.

As an ordained cleric, the Deacon most assuredly can preside at the graveside service and bless the grave. He can also preside at the Vigil Service and the Funeral Liturgy Outside Mass, if that form of the Funeral Rites is chosen…just as the Deacon can preside at Baptisms, Marriages or their convalidation, Communion Services as well as Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and Solemn Celebrations of the Liturgy of the Hours. He can preside at Liturgies of the Word and other services of public prayer. He may impart blessings, according to the norms established in the Book of Blessings, and confer sacramentals.

I was very grateful when I was fortunate enough to have a Deacon as they provide much needed help. Being able to send him for the graveside services, which he could do every bit as much as I, could allow me to take the emergency call to anoint someone, which only I could do.

The apportion of pastoral work depended upon what the Deacon was free to assume. For transitional deacons completing their pastoral year, it was important for them to have a complete rotation. On the other hand, permanent deacons can have work and family responsibilities…or not. I have worked with some who had retired from their secular work and they were full time in ministry.

Thank you Father, for both your condolences and your reply to my question, which has set my mind at rest. The deacon in question has indeed retired from his secular work and is a good and kind man.

 

[7_Sorrows]

can someone request a priest accompany the family to the gravesite rather than the deacon?

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

can someone request a priest accompany the family to the gravesite rather than the deacon?

Request, yes. Whether or not the priest can go depends on his other commitments. We sometimes have back-to-back funerals, and in a one-priest parish, that means he has to remain at church for the second funeral. A deacon’s prayers and blessing of the gravesite are surely no less efficacious than those of a priest. Of course if the priest has a special relationship with the family, that could change things.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

can someone request a priest accompany the family to the gravesite rather than the deacon?

Yes, certainly. One can ask for anything. One could ask for the bishop to preside, for example, but it can be a matter of what is attainable, frankly.

I remember once that I was at the cemetery to do the graveside for a parishioner when I received word that one of my confreres was taken ill in the sacristy after the end of a funeral Mass in another town and there was no one to take his place, so I told the person informing me that they should come ahead (they were coming to the same cemetery) and, as soon as I finished the graveside service I was about to begin, I would come to the other part of the cemetery and do the other graveside. I felt sorry for them as they did not know me and I did not know them or their loved one but that was the only option at hand.

In ancient of days when we had many hands, we could shift. If one is alone as a priest and one confronts a situation of where one has to choose in a crisis between sending a deacon to do what he is perfectly capable of doing by virtue of his own ordination, that is to bless the grave and do the final prayers, or go myself because I am a priest but a person on the point of death – to whom I am being summoned – would die without the last sacraments because I can’t be in two places at the same time…well, I am sorry but at that point the priority has to go to the dying person, who needs what only I as the priest can do, and send the deacon for the graveside knowing his prayers and blessing are just as efficacious as mine.

And in more and more places, the deacon may be all there is to do the entirety of the funeral…vigil, rite of funeral without Mass, and the graveside as well.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Yes, certainly. One can ask for anything. One could ask for the bishop to preside, for example, but it can be a matter of what is attainable, frankly.

I remember once that I was at the cemetery to do the graveside for a parishioner when I received word that one of my confreres was taken ill in the sacristy after the end of a funeral Mass in another town and there was no one to take his place, so I told the person informing me that they should come ahead (they were coming to the same cemetery) and, as soon as I finished the graveside service I was about to begin, I would come to the other part of the cemetery and do the other graveside. I felt sorry for them as they did not know me and I did not know them or their loved one but that was the only option at hand.

In ancient of days when we had many hands, we could shift. If one is alone as a priest and one confronts a situation of where one has to choose in a crisis between sending a deacon to do what he is perfectly capable of doing by virtue of his own ordination, that is to bless the grave and do the final prayers, or go myself because I am a priest but a person on the point of death – to whom I am being summoned – would die without the last sacraments because I can’t be in two places at the same time…well, I am sorry but at that point the priority has to go to the dying person, who needs what only I as the priest can do, and send the deacon for the graveside knowing his prayers and blessing are just as efficacious as mine.

And in more and more places, the deacon may be all there is to do the entirety of the funeral…vigil, rite of funeral without Mass, and the graveside as well.

thanks to you both for replies to my question.

 

[otjm]

Individual circumstances vary. When my mother died 2 years ago, we had a concelebrated Mass with a number of priests (I count 6 or 7), and so no deacons (although three of the parishes all had them). The main celebrant was the pastor of the parish my mother had gone to for a number of years. The priest at the cemetery was my second cousin, who is semi retired. A deacon woud hve been fine (they would have known at lest on if not two family members), but I would not have not asked my cousin to do the graveside service.

And so it goes.