For whom the bell tolls

2 mins read
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Scott Richert (New)Funerals aren’t as well attended as they used to be. That reads, I’m afraid, like the beginning of a tasteless joke (“Nobody came to his funeral even though he went to all of theirs”), but I mean it as an empirical, though anecdotal, observation.

When I was younger, the crowds at funerals were larger, and multigenerational. Funerals weren’t attended just by family but by friends and even by fellow parishioners who may not have known the deceased by anything more than name or sight, but who acknowledged a connection to him or her in their common baptism, in which they both died with Christ.

Today, those who gather to pray for the repose of the faithful departed are not only fewer in number but in kind. Family members still come, but the farther removed one is from the deceased, both in the family tree and geographically, the less likely one is to be there. Children — not just the very young but even teenagers — are few and far between, unless the deceased is their parent or grandparent. Friends of the faithful departed and of the family are more likely to drop by the funeral home for visitation the day before, and to offer as an explanation for their absence the next day the excuse (sometimes sincerely held) that they wouldn’t want to intrude on the family’s grief. Fellow parishioners seem less likely today to regard a funeral as a communal action of a parish than as a private, invitation-only affair.

A few years ago, introducing his song “My Hometown” in his one-man Broadway show, Bruce Springsteen recalled his childhood in a Catholic neighborhood in Freehold, New Jersey, just down the street from St. Rose of Lima Church, where he “literally grew up surrounded by God. Surrounded by God and — and all my relatives.”

“And when the church bells rang,” Springsteen continued, “[we] had front-row seats to watch the townsmen in their Sunday suits carry out an endless array of dark wooden boxes, to be slipped into the rear of the Freedmans’ funeral home long, black Cadillac, for the short ride to St. Rose cemetery hill on the edge of town. And there all our Catholic neighbors … and all the Springsteens who came before — they patiently waited for us.”

Death is a part of life — of our life as human beings, and our life as Catholics. Remembering that reality is part of what makes life worth living, and it helps us understand that, no matter how hard we rage against the dying of the light, ultimately our life is not in our own hands. Our life is a gift, and the extent to which we appreciate that gift may, paradoxically, depend on how fully aware we are that, one day, we, too, will draw our last breath and shuffle off this mortal coil.

Here in Huntington, Indiana, from the steeples of St. Mary and Sts. Peter and Paul, the church bells still ring as each funeral draws to a close. A solitary bell tolls once for each year that the deceased sojourned on this earth — years of joy, and years of pain; years of hope, and years of fear; years of faith, and years of doubt; years of growth, and years of decline — and each one of them a gift from the Father who created us and the Son who gave his life to save us and the Spirit who dwells within the faithful who acknowledge that this life is not entirely our own.

Working from home this past year and a half, and living just up the street from both St. Mary’s and Sts. Peter and Paul, I’ve heard those bells often. I, too, don’t attend as many funerals as I could or should, though as my time on this earth grows longer, I’m attending more than I wish. But when I hear those bells, I pause and offer a prayer for the deceased and all the faithful departed, and remember that someday I — and you, dear reader, and everyone we know and love — will be the one for whom the bell tolls.

Scott P. Richert is publisher for OSV.

Scott P. Richert

Scott P. Richert is publisher for OSV.