← The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Why We Bury the Dead
00:09:27
Why can't Catholics scatter ashes? Why does the Church ask us to bury the dead? Fr. Mike Schmitz explores the Catholic understanding of honoring the dead, explains why scattering ashes isn't permitted, and reveals what these practices teach us about the dignity of the human person and the promise of eternal life.
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They came up to scatter his ashes in Lake Superior. And as they said this, my heart just dropped. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension Presents. So recently I was able to be part of a group that led a number of teens from our diocese out to a Steubenville youth conference. We took our group from the Diocese of Duluth all the way out to the Archdiocese of Denver. It was awesome. Outside the Rocky Mountains. We also always want to include a component of service. And if you've ever had to do, like, you know, service hours for your church or for confirmation or something like that, you kind of know the experience of, I'm just volunteering in this place, and it might not hit my heart. That's the kind of thing, right? It might not feel like this is meaningful work. So whenever we try to decide where we're going to go or what we're going to do, the question is, is this meaningful service? We contacted the Archdiocese of Denver. They run multiple cemeteries. And so what happened was we had this group of about 80 of our teens, plus the adults. We went to the cemetery, and the man who runs the whole thing, they gave us their philosophy of taking care of, not only taking care of those who are grieving, but taking care of the dead. And a couple lessons about this, that was just so powerful. Number one, he said in one of their lines is we fill the void of loss with faith. For those who are grieving, they experience this void, this void of loss. And I loved that line. We have a mission, and mission is to fill the void of loss with faith. You know, if you've ever had a loss, if you've ever had that grief, you know that a lot of things kind of cram in. We can fill that. The void of that loss with distractions. We can fill the void of that loss with destructive behaviors that just like kind of trying to numb ourselves to the pain. We can sometimes fill that void of loss with superstition or with, you know, those kind of those things that I might tell myself in order to make myself feel better. But to fill the void of loss with faith connects this pain I'm going through with the reality of God. Like, the reality, the truth of who God is, particularly the truth of who God is in Jesus Christ, particularly the truth of who we are made in God's image, redeemed by Jesus Christ, that we all have a destiny, and that destiny is meant to be eternal life with him. And so to be able to fill the void of loss with faith and that sense of like, okay, you can pray here because why? Because God hears our prayers. That even in the midst of your grief, even in the midst of your loss, God is with you. And that's so powerful, so important. So they have this mission to care for those who have lost, those who are grieving, but also this mission to care for those who have died. The guy who ran the whole thing, he kind of gave me a, hey, Father, would you like to be in that place where we prepare bodies? He didn't take any of the teens, obviously, he didn't take any of the other adults. Just said, would you like to be there? Because he knew that I would want to pray. And I was like, I said, well, please. And so walking back, the people who were working and caring for the bodies of these deceased people, it was remarkable the respect they had for the bodies of those who had died. Just the care they had for the bodies of those who had died was remarkable. And it gave me the opportunity to pray for the souls of those who had died. Then the work we did, the service we did after all this, you know, this preparation. And we care for those who are grieving, fill the void of a loss with faith, but also we care for the bodies of those who have been placed in the earth. And so we went out to a location where they had a special part of the cemetery dedicated to essentially what you might call unborn babies that could be children who were kid through abortion, but most often was children who were lost in the womb or children who were born stillborn or those who were born but then a short time later had died. It was remarkable to see these high schoolers who were just so struck by, oh, this baby, or, oh, this child. Oh, this young adult. This young man was my age. That kind of situation, oh, my gosh, I can see this was a brother and a sister. And to just see the way in which these high schoolers were faced with, not only with death and mortality, but also faced with the dignity of this each and every life. They had this mentality of like, I can help, I can do something. Someone's going to come back and they're going to see that we cleaned this headstone, we cleaned this space, or maybe no one will come back. Maybe we're the only ones to visit this grave site. Maybe they don't have family who visit them regularly. But we can be here, we can visit. And realizing that that was an honor that was extended to them. You know, one of the corporal works of mercy is burying the dead. And there's something so powerful. It's connected to theology of the body, right, where we know that you are your soul, but you also are your body. And that when our soul and body are separated in death, that's what death is, the separation of body and soul. The body still has an intrinsic dignity. Yes, it goes into the ground. Yes, it decays. Or maybe it's cremated and it's entombed in the earth, but it still has this incredible, incredible dignity. Why? Because it's your body. I got back from that trip, and I was at a local church. There's a group of adults in the back. And at one point, they saw me, and they kind of waved, and I'm like, okay, how can I help you? And they said, well, we're in town. And long story short, they said that their father. These are all adults. Their father had passed away, but he had gone to that church as a child. And so they came up to scatter his ashes in Lake Superior. And as they said this, my heart just dropped. I made another video on this, that as Catholics, we can be cremated. My heart dropped because they had cremated their father. But then they were going to scatter his ashes. He loved Lake Superior. He was going to scatter his ashes there. They said, is there some kind of prayer we can pray? They didn't know. Again, it was almost through no fault of their own. They just didn't know. I'm sorry, we don't. We don't do that as Catholics. And I said, I encourage you. Go back. Go back home. Bring. I mean, pray at the lake, but then bring your father's remains, or cremains, they call them. Bring your father's remains back home and talk to your priest and ask if he can help you find a suitable place, a sacred place for your father's remains. They left because I don't have any authority over them, right? I can't tell them anything else, but I just have been praying and so hoping that they didn't scatter their father's ashes. Why? Because the body is meant to remain intact. Yes, of course. We corrupt, right? We disintegrate. We go to the earth. But there's also. I just kept thinking, you love your father so much, and here's Lake Superior. You're going to scatter his ashes, and where will you go to visit him? We can go back to that same spot you scattered his ashes, but the remains are gone at this point. But just like those teens who realized, here is this child, here is this young person, here is this adult, and those who loved Them can always come back and visit their grave site, can always come back and know that, okay, their remains are here, their soul is somewhere else, but their body or the remains of their body are here. As Catholic Christians, we know that we are not permitted to scatter ashes. We're not permitted to put ashes in a little necklace or any other kind of jewelry. We're not permitted to divide up the person we love's ashes and give a little bit to this and a little bit to that. We don't do that. Please never do that. If you have done that, or if you have that, that trinket or locket with someone's ashes in it, bring it to your pastor so, so he can take care of it and help you put up, give a proper place for the remains of your loved one to rest. We believe in the resurrection of the body. How God will do that mysteriously, yes, he can. He can do all things. He can, yes, reconstitute a body or however that's going to work in the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the body. He can do that even if someone's remains have been scattered. But in the meantime, it's our responsibility to treat those remains with dignity by placing them in sacred ground, not by scattering them out of a helicopter or onto a lake or up at the cabin. Burying the dead, not scattering ashes, but burying the dead is a work of mercy. Visiting the dead and praying for the dead is another kind of work of mercy. So my invitation, my encouragement is how about this? You might not be in a place where you've given a choice to cremate or bury or scatter on any of those things. It might not be your choice today, but maybe the next time you go past a cemetery, just realize those, they're people, bodies of people who are buried there. They're laid to rest there. And just say a prayer. Say a prayer for the repose of their souls, say a prayer for their loved ones that the Lord fills that void of loss with faith in their lives. And think about your own death and the fact that one day where they are, you will be anyways. Probably. Ascension presents My name is Father Mike. God bless.