FROM DUST YOU CAME TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN SERIES OF WEEKLY

From Dust You Came To Dust You Shall Return Series Of Weekly

Has written a few thoughts for today, Ash Wednesday.In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.+ For dust you are and to dust you will return.The traditional formula for imposition of ashes alludes to Genesis 3:19. This Lent, we’ll share a series of weekly reflections provided by members of The Saint Francis Foundation’s Church Relations team. Naked we came and shall return into the grave.‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ February 2018 Ministry News. From dust weve come and dust we are and. I can’t think of a more powerful reminder that you and I are mere creatures, with a limited life span, so we had better make good use of our limited time.Ash Wednesday is supposed to remind people of their mortality: “Remember man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”Dust We Are And Shall Return David Gungor & John Arndt. You come forward in just a moment, a member of our clergy will place ashes on your forehead and say to you, From dust you come and to dust you shall return.

It asserts that there is nothing special about man, that his persistent carbon footprint is an offense against the planet, and that even if he has a spiritual side, his departure should let him return to his “common place with creation.”American behavior is often a strange mix of often not-fully-thought-out ideas, either popular trends we follow or think reflect “modern,” maybe even “scientific” thinking, coupled with “practicality.” That’s the case with cremation. It is an anthropology that shares common roots with the earlier materialism. That said, in rescinding the ban on cremation, the Church reaffirms that she does not regard burial and cremation as equal options: the Church explicitly affirmed her preference that a Christian be buried, in imitation of his Master, who also lay in the tomb.While the Church once forbade cremation because it expressed a false anthropology (and removed that proscription when the ideological motive disappeared), the truth is that another false anthropology is in part responsible for cremation’s contemporary popularity. Yes, the Vatican recently reiterated that Catholics should bury and not scatter ashes, but I fear that will have as much of a following as practice “you-don’t-need-to-abstain-on-Friday-as-long-as-you-do- another-penitential act.”The Catholic prohibition on cremation, imposed in reaction to Enlightenment era materialism that promoted it as a statement against “the resurrection of the body,” was rescinded in the early 1960s when those having recourse to cremation seemed driven more by limited land availability than hardcore ideology. This downward convergence of views is such that Catholic cemeteries increasingly offer space for burials and urn storage.

This essay will build off the latter book, which is a critique of cremation.Le Guay observes that while some people think of cremation simply in “functional” terms (I’ve got a dead body. Alas, neither is translated. He has written two powerful books on contemporary trends related to the end-of-life and how we mark it: Qu’avons-nous perdu en perdant la mort? and La mort en cendres. Finances represent the “practical” side: the Catholics I hear choosing cremation say they pick it because it’s cheaper, and that’s generally true.Damien Le Guay is a French philosopher who specializes in end-of-life issues.

He’s deemed “selfish” for keeping two meters, for laying some claim on this planet to lie in.Our language speaks of the grave as a “final resting place.” The truth is that the cremated dead often don’t even enjoy that. While Tolstoy famously answered his own question, “How Much Land Does a Man Need? with “six feet from head to toe,” cremation begrudges man even that. But cremation depreciates space. As incarnate creatures, human beings are subject to space and time. Le Guay’s point is also that, even if individual people don’t necessarily ponder the anthropological issues at stake, the cumulative effect of increasing numbers of people acquiescing in them changes (coarsens) the culture.Cremation dislocates. Many people may not even reckon with that side of the ledger, although cremation’s true believers are ready to promote it whenever they can.

Even the Church’s annual commemorations of the dead become disjointed: with what concrete body, with what concrete place, does one mark All Soul’s Day or the anniversary of death? The closet shelf?Cremation disconnects from society. The past is erased along with those who have passed. Ashes floating on the sea are nameless and cast out of time.But if time is lost for the dead (who have, after all, entered eternity), for the living it is shrunken down to the present. A headstone announces the essentials of a human biography: name, dates of birth and death.

One often hears something like, “He looks so much like himself.” You can’t say that to a sealed ashtray.A wake with a body connects even as it separates. Consider: in the traditional wake, some bodily connection is there. Our bodily way of interacting with the world is absent. The dead no longer interrupt us. Funerals lose their urgency, because they are scheduled at the mourner’s convenience rather than the decaying corpse’s need.

Is somebody going to ask: “Can I come over to your mantelpiece next Sunday?” In erasing space and time, we also erase social memory. “Let’s all stand by respectfully as we watch the oven fire burn for the next two to four hours.” That we consider that something we should not watch poses the question: is the violence and barbarism in the watching or in the doing?When one visits a parish cemetery (which is why I prefer parish cemeteries over diocesan business enterprises) one often also finds the graves of friends and acquaintances.