I have heard it said that every funeral, whatever the scale and whatever the setting, ought to be in some sense a confrontation with death. Modern secular funerals increasingly dodge that confrontation, with growing trends for bright colours, upbeat songs and relaxed dress codes. Jokes and light-hearted eulogies are the order of the day. The awful looming mystery is pushed to one side. Even some churches now acquiesce in these kinds of diversionary ceremonies.
As Christians, we need to retain the idea of the funeral as a serious and weighty reckoning with the unavoidable truth that we will all die, and face God. The Catholic requiem Mass is an extended prayer for mercy for the departed, and a recognition of our own need for that same mercy. There is a magnificent sixteenth century choral piece, by John Sheppard, called Media vita in morte sumus, which means “in the midst of life we are in death”. We may live rather longer than our ancestors, with less likelihood of a sudden departure through violence, accident or disease, but we are not immortal. “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time…He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,” as the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer has it.
