Hope

I suggested at the end of my post Assisted Suicide: A round up that there was a need to promote hope, rather than assisted suicide.

This post at The Sensible Bond makes interesting reading in that context: More on Hope.

My own reflections since my earlier post have been rather limited - and rather off at a tangent. At one time the Catholic Church rather frowned upon cremation - I am not old enough to recall the extent to which it might at one time have been forbidden. Nowadays, from a disciplinary point of view, burial and cremation are viewed equally by the Church.

But I do think burial has a better sign value than cremation. We are buried "with Christ" so that we can rise again "with Christ" - this is a part of the meaning of Baptism, the Sacrament to which the funeral liturgy looks back. Obviously the buried body will eventually decay away, and in the end, there is little material difference between the decayed body that has been buried and the ashes that remain after cremation. But there is a better signification of Catholic teaching about the resurrection of the body. In the past I have argued [not on this blog, though if I can find what I wrote on the subject I will try to post it] that the care that we give to the physical body of the person who is terminally ill, or dying, is a recognition of the dignity of the body as a body that will we hope rise again to heavenly glory. The respect that we give to the physical life of the body is a sign of the "fullness of life" that is heaven. Therein lies the grounding of a Christian opposition to euthanasia or assisted suicide.

It is profoundly about the nature of Christian hope. I wonder whether a catachesis on the sign value of burial would contribute to the promotion of hope among Catholics?