Cemetery Praying

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I think it’s a really nice tradition, too. I left behind many traditions when I left Judaism but not that one.
 
We have Mass in the Cemetery on All Soul’s Day. After the Mass the priest walks around and prays for the dead, everyone goes with him. It is so beautiful!
 
There’s a Baptist church with a cemetery about a mile from where I live, and yes I do, because I figure, they, being Baptist, probably aren’t going to pray for the dead in their cemetery.
 
Vandalizing cemeteries leaves me scratching my head. Ok, so someone doesn’t believe in angels or Mary but to purposely break them or steal them? How low can you go? Vandalism at Jewish cemeteries usually consists of swastikas painted on the headstones. Usually easy enough to lean off. Rarely they are smashed.

Only subhumans would desecrate graves in my book and I don’t care if they’re young teens either. It’s so pointless and unthinking.
 
We Eastern Christians do it every year around the end of the Paschal season. Here is a picture from my former congregation:
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Also, it is customary to visit before the High Holy Days. The stones represent a permanent memory of the departed, as they are more enduring than flowers.
 
An elementary school in a small town that my kids attended would walk to the parish cemetery in classes. They would pray the rosary there in October and I thought that was very nice.
 
I don’t usually pass any cemeteries in my usual driving routes. Though there are a couple of columbariums close by. It is a good practice to develop and maintain.
 
I know some people don’t pass them, but in the Philadelphia - Wilmington area there seems to be some old cemetery every few blocks. There are so many around I haven’t even scratched the surface of visiting them all though I’ve been to like 2 dozen. They go back to the early 1800s in some cases and a couple even before that.
 
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Lane said:
Does anyone else go to the cemetery to pray for the dead ? …especially on the anniversary of their death… I do, and I’ve kinda made a hobby of going to places like that to pray. I like to drive to my church and pray in the parking lot. I like to to to the cemetery to pray. Sure I can pray at home, but that’s boring…
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Not as much as I would like to, but yes.

My parish is actually planning on praying the Liturgy of the Hours (either Vespers or Compline) in the parish cemetery on All Souls’ Day (which is a Saturday this year)
 
May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
 
Yes, people moved away and the cemeteries are no longer maintained. I visited my friend out in the country, and near her house there was a cemetery which had been completely abandoned because the few people who were left in the area who were connected to the people in the cemetery were too old to do anything in the way of maintenance, and the families were too far away in both time and space that they didn’t do anything about it either. The graves were very old, before 1950, I think, and the church building was long gone.

A very sad situation.
 
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Oh no, I apparently have an opposite tendency to leaving a stone. I have a tiny white quartz stone sitting in the bookcase near the entrance to my room. On the rare occasion that we’re on the other side of the river (and yes, we do have bridges, and even tunnels in Australia :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:) my unbelieving husband will swing by the cemetery to the grave that holds my parents. We visit, he finds a tiny weed to remove, and I a small pebble and reminisce and pray.
 
That’s a lovely thing to do, too…a memento of the visit brought home!
 
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