Funeral Cold Cuts

Seeing the close connection between funerals and weddings

11/29/2018

Revelation 18:1-2, 9A I, John, saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth became illumined by his splendor. After this I heard what sounded like the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying: "Alleluia! Salvation, glory, and might belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her harlotry. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants." Then the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb."

This week I will officiate at two funeral Masses, but also preside at two wedding Masses. As far as earthly experiences go, nothing could be more polar opposite. At a funeral you shudder as you see the depths of human sorrow while at a wedding you soar to the heights of human happiness. A funeral is especially tragic and confounding when it is a young person whose brief life is snuffed out unexpectedly leaving everyone questioning if God is really in charge. For me, weddings are spiritually more special when a couple can share not only their love but also their faith. That is, when both bride and groom are Catholic and can receive Holy Communion. God feels really close in those wedding Masses because absolutely nothing separates the couple: they become “one” in every respect. In other words, what could be more different than a funeral and a wedding? In the first, God seems so absent, and in the second he seems so present.

But I would suggest to you that funerals and weddings are much more closely connected than we might imagine. Indeed, I would go so far as to say weddings and funerals are not only closely connected, they converge, and become one like the two sides of a coin. Think about it this way: what happens at a funeral? The deceased person steps outside of time and into eternity. But what will we experience in eternity? Well, I believe we will attend an eternal wedding banquet. And at that wedding we won’t be an invited guest like the best man or the maid of honor, we will actually be the Bride, that is, the Church, the corporate Bride of Christ. In other words, every funeral we experience merely the earthly side of the coin of Christianity, but the other side of the coin is the eternal wedding banquet of Jesus and his Bride, the Church.

There’s a little line in Shakespeare’s popular play “Hamlet” that has always intrigued me. Hamlet rues the fact that his mother got married so soon after his father died. His father was actually murdered, we discover. And Hamlet says: “The funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” Talk about heaping insult upon injury! To save money, they used some of the cold cuts from the funeral reception for the wedding feast! Quite inadvertently, however, Hamlet stumbled upon that close connection, indeed that convergence, between funerals and weddings. When you use the cold cuts from a funeral reception for a wedding banquet, you can almost catch how funeral and weddings are two sides of the same coin of Christianity. One side is earthly and sad, but the other side is heavenly and joyous.

Today we read something in scripture that should be far more intriguing than Shakespeare. We read in Revelation: “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” Have you heard that line, slightly paraphrased, at some point in the Mass? The priest says those words, almost exactly, right before we receive Holy Communion: “Behold the Lamb of God…blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” In other words, every Mass is the foretaste of the heavenly wedding of Jesus and the Church. And by the way, Communion means when the Holy Couple of Christ and His Church consummate their marriage. You do know what “consummate” means, right?

But every Mass is also a re-presentation of the Lord’s death on Calvary. Oh, of course, we don’t kill Jesus again, but we do re-enact his passion and death at every Mass. Right in the middle of Mass, we all say, “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.” In other words, if you are spiritually awake and aware at the Mass, then you will experience a close connection, indeed a convergence, of a funeral and a wedding. The Mass contains the two sides of the coin of Christianity, both the sorrow of death of Christ and the happiness of a marriage of the Lamb.

And we might even look at the Holy Communion Host like Hamlet ruefully regarded the cold cuts of his father’s funeral and his mother’s wedding. “The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” Holy Communion is the “coin” of Christianity – heck it is even shaped like a little coin – that contains the two great mysteries of human existence namely, death and marriage. At every Mass, therefore, when you come up to receive Holy Communion, your faith should allow you to taste a little of both.

Praised be Jesus Christ!