One of the most obvious ways that our Western society, and I'm speaking now particularly as an American, has been decimated and secularized, torn literally from its historical roots in the Christian faith, is in our attitude towards a sickness, dying, death and burial. We have lost our traditional Christian orientation towards death, and I'd like to speak about that. It's
manifest in many particular ways. The outsourcing of death to hospitals, which was so grotesquely revealed during the time of COVID, but it had been going on in our country for a very long time, for at least fifty sixty years. The outsourcing of death to hospitals, the sad overdependence on doctors, as though when you're sick and you're facing threatening illness, you are tempted to turn to the doctors, as though
somehow that's the most important thing. It may buy you an extra week, it may buy you an extra month or a few months, But the hubbub associated with that kind of orientation as death drawn nears, is often very foolish and a massive waste of resources.
In time.
I think most Americans know that the vast majority of our healthcare money is spent in the last year of life by people trying to hold on because they're not prepared for the next life. They're certainly not looking forward to it, not anticipating it, and therefore will be willing to do almost anything and spend almost any amount of money in order to have just a few more days,
a few more months. It is all completely grotesque, of course, and a massive manifestation of a lack of traditional Christian faith. Besides this that overdependence on doctors, we have a catastrophic rise in cremation, which has nothing to do with the Christian faith, is a complete violation of all traditional Christian norms on how you treat the body and how you love and care for the departed. It has a pagan origin,
nothing to do with Christianity at all. Sorry, and the accommodations that Protestants almost wholesale have made, and even the Roman Catholic Church, which has what shall I say, over assimilated and not stood fast against the embrace of cremation. Even sadly our Catholic brothers have gone way too far and accommodating in the culture. We Orthodox don't believe in cremation. We don't permit cremation under any circumstances. It's simply pagan
and has nothing to do with our faith. I'll tell you I've had a number of just very personally disturbing experiences at Catholic funerals of friends, dear friends, and to see the normal structure of a traditional funeral with the sensing of the body stripped of the body. It's a very strange thing to come into a Catholic funeral and to see a priest sensing a little tiny box full of ashes. The incense is to honor the body. How
can you incense what you've just disgraced. You've thrown a body that will be raised from the dead into fire, turned it into ash, and then you're going to sense it as though you revere it, as though the body itself contains the grace of God, which it does. Can you imagine if the Virgin Mary took down the body of her son off the precious cross and threw him into the fire because it was less expensive.
No, there would be no pieight if that was the case.
No, We instead are inspired by the Virgin holding the broken body of her son in outer devotion, loving him, weeping over him, caring for him, preparing his body, cleaning him, washing him, adorning him, wrapping him, putting him into a tomb, and then lamenting.
This is what we do.
This is what we do, the idea that somehow will keep the external structures while gutting the core sensing which you've just disgraced.
What a said thing? What a said thing.
And on top of that, there's the commercialization of the death industry. This is both in the cemeteries and in the mortuaries, which have become massive, big business. I had the numbers some years ago, maybe ten years ago. I was talking to an Orthodox Christian mortician, and he told me that it was an eighty five billion dollar business
now in America. And that has certainly been my cases I've witnessed during the years of my pastor, and the complete commercialization of the death industry, so much so that it to bury someone these days it costs more than a buying a fancy new car.
I mean, you might as well buy a portie.
That's about how much it costs these days to bury someone. It's really utterly and totally and said one of the first things that I did when I became a preistomino sort of presiding or senior pastor in my parish is I went and met all the morticians locally. I went and I interviewed them, and I told them, look, if you tell me the truth, I promise I'll respect you and I'll use you, and I'll use your services.
I said, but I want to know what you pay for things.
I want you to tell me what the wholesale price is, what you actually pay, and what you're charging me and my people.
No one would show me that. I went from mortuary to mortuary.
No owner would tell me the truth except one, and that man I respect, and for the last thirty years I have used him for all my funerals, and he has become really a part of the family and a part of our parish's catharsis around bearing our loved ones, a very dear, dear friend. Now, after all of these years, I respect him so much because he was serving from the heart. His mortuary and his burial chapel were not just fundraising, not just income for him.
But he really cares about people.
And he told me he called up on his computer, this is exactly how much I paid for the coffin. This is how much I'm charging you for the coffin. I was completely blown away and I asked him, I said, I said, Dean, do you think I said, we orthodox, We're used to taking care of our own. I said, do you think you could train a small group of women and it's group, a small group of men to do the basic preparations, basic body preparations for our departed
loved ones? And he said, one hundred percent, I can, and he did, and we were able to create for the first time in our parish, a traditional burial society, a society of a number of men and a number of women who know how to care for the deceased. And we take our dear loved ones often from hospice right into as soon as they repose, if they repose on hospice here in California. That means we don't have to wait for a corner days to get a death certificate,
a burial certificate. And Dean gets that for us. We have a very simple contract worked out with him where he will transport our loved ones. If we need transport, he will bring them to our burial chapel, to our chapel here at church, our funeral chapel, our ladies. If it's a woman who has reposed, we'll meet him and our loved one who's departed, or the men if it was a man who was reposed, And then we, having been trained, very simple, very easy, we of course prepare the body.
We read the psalms.
While that's going on, vigils can be held so that the loved ones family can be with them and saying prayers and reading scripture. Then we can perform the funeral and then the mortician comes back. We transfer the person to the cemetery, We do the cemetery prayers after the funeral, and then the burial prayers for a mercy meal.
This is how it's done. This is the normal way.
And I'll tell you having the Burial Society has been simply an inspiration for us, an absolute inspiration, and it's reduced the cost of a burial by about eighty to ninety percent, and so we are able now to help even people who are financially challenged. We are able to help bury their loved ones because each burial, each funeral, is not twenty five thousand dollars. There's a very encouraging book that really motivated me. It was written by a
very beloved deacon, Deacon Mark Barna. I met Deacon back in the Carolinas many years ago. He had just published a book called a Christian Ending, a Christian Ending, and it's all about traditional Christian practices of caring for the departed.
It was a great inspiration for me.
In fact, it led me to my own study, and some years ago, I don't know, maybe fifteen years ago, I published a seven part series called a Christian Ending to Our Lives, Death, Burial and Christian Customs at the end of Life. You can find that on the Patristic Nectar app. If you go to the app and you just go under theological lectures and look for a Christian
Into our Lives, you can find it there. I also serialized it in the course of seven articles that were published in the Word magazine of the antiochy arch Diocese. I'm hoping to bring it out as a small book that can be used to encourage people to recover what has been lost in our understanding of the end of life and the sacred customs that the Church has always embraced on the care for for the departed. Why not, dear ones, why not recover our traditional customs around death.
And by the way, these aren't just orthodox Christian customs. These aren't just traditional Catholic customs. These are traditional Protestant customs too. This is what how we used to do it here in America. We used to dig our own graves. We used to wake our own people in our living rooms, on our couches. We would orient them towards the east. We would invite people to come and pay their last respects in the home. We would dig the whole ourself.
We would prepare the bodies. We would bury our loved ones. We would dress them and send them off to paradise with our fervent prayers.
This is what we did. This is what Christians have always done.
Why not start a burial society in your own church?
Why not?
Why not incorporate this incredible love for the departed and recover a Christian disposition towards the most sublime period of one's life, when they are loosening their tether to this earthly life and are moving into a place that we trust and pray for, of paradise in the presence of Christ.
Why not? Why not?
May God help you to apply your Christian faith to the death and burial of your loved ones. And may you be inspired, May you be inspired, God be with you. Hey, everyone, I hope you've downloaded the Patristic Nectar app on your phone. It is a treasure trove of soul nourishing content and I hope you'll consider becoming a regular donor to Patristic Nectar today