We have grown so accustomed to what is called the “American way of death” that very few people question the customs and practices of the modern American funeral industry. Yet many of these practices reflect our pagan, post-Christian era and often appear in conjunction with Orthodox funerals, as though there was nothing wrong with them.

    Among sociologists there has for some time been an awareness that there is something profoundly awry with contemporary attitudes towards death and funerals. Most of the literature on this is specialized and fails to reach the general public, although Jessica Mitford’s book, The American Walt of Death, enjoyed a measure of popular success about 20 years ago. A recent survey of western man’s changing attitudes towards death, by the Frenchman, Philippe Arie, titled The Hour of our Death, is perhaps the most interesting–and disturbing–new book on the subject.

    Mr. Arie speaks of “the triumph of medicalization” in our society. “Modern medicine,” he says, has made it possible “to delay the fatal moment; the measures taken to soothe pain have the secondary effect of prolonging life …. Medicine reduced pain; it even succeeded in eliminating it altogether …. Evil was no longer part of human nature, as the religions, especially Christianity, believed. It still existed, of course, but outside of men…in certain deviant behaviors such as war, crime, and nonconformity, which had not yet been corrected but which would one day be eliminated by society just as illness and pain had been eliminated by medicine. But if there is no more evil, what do we do about death?” Modern “medicalizod” man believes that death is a “failure” on the part of medicine, rather than “a natural, necessary phenomenon ….. (It) should have disappeared along with disease, but it persists…(and) its persistence is a scandal.”

    And so, just as serious illness is often concealed from a patient and sometimes also from those around him, death is also concealed, or made into something it isn’t. For example, embalming was introduced primarily in order to facilitate transportation of a body over long distances, such as might be necessary in time of war. But today we embalm everyone, whether or not it is necessary or required by law (in most states it isn’t required); but as Mr. Arie points out, “Embalming serves less to preserve or honor the dead than it does temporarily to maintain the appearance of life in order to protect the living.” Protect the living from what? From the fact of death, from the very meaning of death: “The impulse is always to use the skills of the mortician to erase the signs of death, to make up the deceased until he looks almost alive. It is of paramount importance to create the illusion of life. This illusion enables the visitor to… behave as if the deceased were not dead.” However, anyone who has read Miss Mitford’s accurate description of What happens when a body is embalmed would never want such a desecration performed on their mother or father; details of this process are kept deliberately secret by the funeral industry for precisely this reason.

    This, of course, is the triumph of ancient pagan attitudes towards death; at heart a triumph of hopelessness, of unbelief, of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” It is also, as Mr. Arie suggests, a triumph of materialism, for “the services of the funeral home, the preparation of the bodies, and the accessories are expensive, and the business provides good profits to a well-organized industry.'”

    But there are signs that this practice of lavishing money on the dead is in transition to a new, “simpler” way of dealing with the “problem” of death. This is what Mr. Arie calls “the invisible death”–which is rapidly gaining in popularity in England and America today. According to this method, a body is quickly cremated and the ashes disposed of in a properly “poetic” manner (scattering in a rose garden, dispersed over the sea, etc.) The body of the dead person is much too disturbing a reality, no matter how much it has been made to look “life-like.” Instead, “at a memorial service, friends and relatives of the deceased gather together without the body to pronounce the eulogy, console the family, indulge in a little philosophical speculation, and, if the occasional aunt, perhaps say a few prayers.” No longer are prayers said for the repose of the dead person; and although many of these families claim to be Christian, few any longer worry about such things as God’s judgment on the soul of their departed mother, father, brother, sister. In fact, the whole idea of a “rendering of accounts” after death is considered by many to be “distasteful,” even “ridiculous” (although if taken seriously the idea is deeply sobering). The unspoken theme of these “new” funerals is that all is finished, closed, ended, and there need be no interest in or concern about the state of the dead person. It is, once again, the triumph of paganism-the gloomy hades of the pre-Christian world, the netherworld where abide the “shades” of the dead. It is, in fact, exactly what Jesus Christ came into the world in order to free us from !

    It is not surprising, then, that non-Orthodox often find Orthodox funerals to be, at best, “quaint” and “old world,” and at worst “morbid” or even embarrassing. Just as Orthodoxy is itself a way of life, which necessarily encompasses death and the next world, so our view of death and funerals is quite different from the prevailing attitude of today’s society. For us the body of a dead Orthodox Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit. In this temple of flesh and blood the Orthodox believer wrestled…against the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph. 2:12); as an athlete of the spirit he had, in his temple of clay, run with patience the race that was set before him by God (Heb. 12:1). In this body the Lord God Himself dwelt many times when He condescended to come to the believer in Holy Communion.

    For these reasons, and many others, a dead body is an honorable thing, worthy of reverence and respect. We do not tear apart, eviscerate, drain, or burn things we love and cherish. This is the first principle underlying Orthodox burial practices, and was first sanctioned by the disciples of the Lord Who lovingly prepared, anointed, and laid away His precious body, showing such respect and love that the faithful women did not fear to return on the third day to complete their task (knowing that the tomb was guarded and that under “natural” circumstances corruption would have already set in). This means that we should avoid unnecessary embalming, autopsy (except when required by law), and the use of make-up on the body of one whom we have loved. When funeral directors object that without proper “preparation” a dead body is unsightly and unseemly, we should recall the words of the funeral service itself: “Now is life’s artful triumph of vanities destroyed! For the spirit hath vanished from its tabernacle, its clay groweth black. The vessel is shattered, voiceless, bereft of feeling, motionless, dead.” The dead body should also be for us an object of instruction: “Come ye, let us gaze keenly at the grave. Where is the beauty of the body, and where its youth? Where are the eyes and the fleshly form? Like the grass all have perished, all have been destroyed …. This transitory life is a shadow, unreal, and an illusive dream …. Let us, then, flee afar from every earthly sin, that we may inherit heavenly things.”

    The second principle of Orthodox funerals is that this body will be raised again on the last day, as promised by Christ. Between the time of death and the moment of resurrection, the instant when the soul is rejoined to the body, the soul undergoes its time of judgment (the Particular Judgment) and then already begins t o participate in the eternal reward or punishment it will experience with the body after the resurrection. This means that although we must honor the body, carefully planting it in the earth like the grain of wheat mentioned in Scripture (John l2:24), we should not lavish money on costly caskets and other arrangements, but give alms and focus our prayers on the soul of the departed one, asking God’s mercy and forgiveness. This is the responsibility not only of the clergy and singers, but of the family as well, as Archbishop John has written: “O relatives and close ones of the dead! Use your money not for outward adornment of the coffin and grave, but in order to help these in need, in memory of your close ones who have died …. Show mercy to the dead, take care for their souls. Before us all stands that same path, and how shall we then wish that we would be remembered in prayer!”