Speaker 1: One of the most obvious ways that our Western society,
Speaker 1: and I'm speaking now particularly as an American, has been
Speaker 1: decimated and secularized, torn literally from its historical roots in
Speaker 1: the Christian faith, is in our attitude towards a sickness, dying,
Speaker 1: death and burial. We have lost our traditional Christian orientation
Speaker 1: towards death, and I'd like to speak about that. It's
Speaker 1: manifest in many particular ways. The outsourcing of death to hospitals,
Speaker 1: which was so grotesquely revealed during the time of COVID,
Speaker 1: but it had been going on in our country for
Speaker 1: a very long time, for at least fifty sixty years.
Speaker 1: The outsourcing of death to hospitals, the sad overdependence on doctors,
Speaker 1: as though when you're sick and you're facing threatening illness,
Speaker 1: you are tempted to turn to the doctors, as though
Speaker 1: somehow that's the most important thing. It may buy you
Speaker 1: an extra week, it may buy you an extra month
Speaker 1: or a few months, But the hubbub associated with that
Speaker 1: kind of orientation as death drawn nears, is often very
Speaker 1: foolish and a massive waste of resources.
Speaker 2: In time.
Speaker 1: I think most Americans know that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: our healthcare money is spent in the last year of
Speaker 1: life by people trying to hold on because they're not
Speaker 1: prepared for the next life. They're certainly not looking forward
Speaker 1: to it, not anticipating it, and therefore will be willing
Speaker 1: to do almost anything and spend almost any amount of
Speaker 1: money in order to have just a few more days,
Speaker 1: a few more months. It is all completely grotesque, of course,
Speaker 1: and a massive manifestation of a lack of traditional Christian faith.
Speaker 1: Besides this that overdependence on doctors, we have a catastrophic
Speaker 1: rise in cremation, which has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: Christian faith, is a complete violation of all traditional Christian
Speaker 1: norms on how you treat the body and how you
Speaker 1: love and care for the departed. It has a pagan origin,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Christianity at all. Sorry, and the
Speaker 1: accommodations that Protestants almost wholesale have made, and even the
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church, which has what shall I say, over
Speaker 1: assimilated and not stood fast against the embrace of cremation.
Speaker 1: Even sadly our Catholic brothers have gone way too far
Speaker 1: and accommodating in the culture. We Orthodox don't believe in cremation.
Speaker 1: We don't permit cremation under any circumstances. It's simply pagan
Speaker 1: and has nothing to do with our faith. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you I've had a number of just very personally disturbing
Speaker 1: experiences at Catholic funerals of friends, dear friends, and to
Speaker 1: see the normal structure of a traditional funeral with the
Speaker 1: sensing of the body stripped of the body. It's a
Speaker 1: very strange thing to come into a Catholic funeral and
Speaker 1: to see a priest sensing a little tiny box full
Speaker 1: of ashes. The incense is to honor the body. How
Speaker 1: can you incense what you've just disgraced. You've thrown a
Speaker 1: body that will be raised from the dead into fire,
Speaker 1: turned it into ash, and then you're going to sense
Speaker 1: it as though you revere it, as though the body
Speaker 1: itself contains the grace of God, which it does. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine if the Virgin Mary took down the body
Speaker 1: of her son off the precious cross and threw him
Speaker 1: into the fire because it was less expensive.
Speaker 2: No, there would be no pieight if that was the case.
Speaker 1: No, We instead are inspired by the Virgin holding the
Speaker 1: broken body of her son in outer devotion, loving him,
Speaker 1: weeping over him, caring for him, preparing his body, cleaning him,
Speaker 1: washing him, adorning him, wrapping him, putting him into a tomb,
Speaker 1: and then lamenting.
Speaker 2: This is what we do.
Speaker 1: This is what we do, the idea that somehow will
Speaker 1: keep the external structures while gutting the core sensing which
Speaker 1: you've just disgraced.
Speaker 2: What a said thing? What a said thing.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, there's the commercialization of the
Speaker 1: death industry. This is both in the cemeteries and in
Speaker 1: the mortuaries, which have become massive, big business. I had
Speaker 1: the numbers some years ago, maybe ten years ago. I
Speaker 1: was talking to an Orthodox Christian mortician, and he told
Speaker 1: me that it was an eighty five billion dollar business
Speaker 1: now in America. And that has certainly been my cases
Speaker 1: I've witnessed during the years of my pastor, and the
Speaker 1: complete commercialization of the death industry, so much so that
Speaker 1: it to bury someone these days it costs more than
Speaker 1: a buying a fancy new car.
Speaker 2: I mean, you might as well buy a portie.
Speaker 1: That's about how much it costs these days to bury someone.
Speaker 1: It's really utterly and totally and said one of the
Speaker 1: first things that I did when I became a preistomino
Speaker 1: sort of presiding or senior pastor in my parish is
Speaker 1: I went and met all the morticians locally. I went
Speaker 1: and I interviewed them, and I told them, look, if
Speaker 1: you tell me the truth, I promise I'll respect you
Speaker 1: and I'll use you, and I'll use your services.
Speaker 2: I said, but I want to know what you pay
Speaker 2: for things.
Speaker 1: I want you to tell me what the wholesale price is,
Speaker 1: what you actually pay, and what you're charging me and
Speaker 1: my people.
Speaker 2: No one would show me that. I went from mortuary
Speaker 2: to mortuary.
Speaker 1: No owner would tell me the truth except one, and
Speaker 1: that man I respect, and for the last thirty years
Speaker 1: I have used him for all my funerals, and he
Speaker 1: has become really a part of the family and a
Speaker 1: part of our parish's catharsis around bearing our loved ones,
Speaker 1: a very dear, dear friend. Now, after all of these years,
Speaker 1: I respect him so much because he was serving from
Speaker 1: the heart. His mortuary and his burial chapel were not
Speaker 1: just fundraising, not just income for him.
Speaker 2: But he really cares about people.
Speaker 1: And he told me he called up on his computer,
Speaker 1: this is exactly how much I paid for the coffin.
Speaker 1: This is how much I'm charging you for the coffin.
Speaker 1: I was completely blown away and I asked him, I said,
Speaker 1: I said, Dean, do you think I said, we orthodox,
Speaker 1: We're used to taking care of our own. I said,
Speaker 1: do you think you could train a small group of
Speaker 1: women and it's group, a small group of men to
Speaker 1: do the basic preparations, basic body preparations for our departed
Speaker 1: loved ones? And he said, one hundred percent, I can,
Speaker 1: and he did, and we were able to create for
Speaker 1: the first time in our parish, a traditional burial society,
Speaker 1: a society of a number of men and a number
Speaker 1: of women who know how to care for the deceased.
Speaker 1: And we take our dear loved ones often from hospice
Speaker 1: right into as soon as they repose, if they repose
Speaker 1: on hospice here in California. That means we don't have
Speaker 1: to wait for a corner days to get a death certificate,
Speaker 1: a burial certificate. And Dean gets that for us. We
Speaker 1: have a very simple contract worked out with him where
Speaker 1: he will transport our loved ones. If we need transport,
Speaker 1: he will bring them to our burial chapel, to our
Speaker 1: chapel here at church, our funeral chapel, our ladies. If
Speaker 1: it's a woman who has reposed, we'll meet him and
Speaker 1: our loved one who's departed, or the men if it
Speaker 1: was a man who was reposed, And then we, having
Speaker 1: been trained, very simple, very easy, we of course prepare
Speaker 1: the body.
Speaker 2: We read the psalms.
Speaker 1: While that's going on, vigils can be held so that
Speaker 1: the loved ones family can be with them and saying
Speaker 1: prayers and reading scripture. Then we can perform the funeral
Speaker 1: and then the mortician comes back. We transfer the person
Speaker 1: to the cemetery, We do the cemetery prayers after the funeral,
Speaker 1: and then the burial prayers for a mercy meal.
Speaker 2: This is how it's done. This is the normal way.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you having the Burial Society has been
Speaker 1: simply an inspiration for us, an absolute inspiration, and it's
Speaker 1: reduced the cost of a burial by about eighty to
Speaker 1: ninety percent, and so we are able now to help
Speaker 1: even people who are financially challenged. We are able to
Speaker 1: help bury their loved ones because each burial, each funeral,
Speaker 1: is not twenty five thousand dollars. There's a very encouraging
Speaker 1: book that really motivated me. It was written by a
Speaker 1: very beloved deacon, Deacon Mark Barna. I met Deacon back
Speaker 1: in the Carolinas many years ago. He had just published
Speaker 1: a book called a Christian Ending, a Christian Ending, and
Speaker 1: it's all about traditional Christian practices of caring for the departed.
Speaker 2: It was a great inspiration for me.
Speaker 1: In fact, it led me to my own study, and
Speaker 1: some years ago, I don't know, maybe fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: I published a seven part series called a Christian Ending
Speaker 1: to Our Lives, Death, Burial and Christian Customs at the
Speaker 1: end of Life. You can find that on the Patristic
Speaker 1: Nectar app. If you go to the app and you
Speaker 1: just go under theological lectures and look for a Christian
Speaker 1: Into our Lives, you can find it there. I also
Speaker 1: serialized it in the course of seven articles that were
Speaker 1: published in the Word magazine of the antiochy arch Diocese.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping to bring it out as a small book
Speaker 1: that can be used to encourage people to recover what
Speaker 1: has been lost in our understanding of the end of
Speaker 1: life and the sacred customs that the Church has always
Speaker 1: embraced on the care for for the departed. Why not,
Speaker 1: dear ones, why not recover our traditional customs around death.
Speaker 1: And by the way, these aren't just orthodox Christian customs.
Speaker 1: These aren't just traditional Catholic customs. These are traditional Protestant
Speaker 1: customs too. This is what how we used to do
Speaker 1: it here in America. We used to dig our own graves.
Speaker 1: We used to wake our own people in our living rooms,
Speaker 1: on our couches. We would orient them towards the east.
Speaker 1: We would invite people to come and pay their last
Speaker 1: respects in the home. We would dig the whole ourself.
Speaker 1: We would prepare the bodies. We would bury our loved ones.
Speaker 1: We would dress them and send them off to paradise
Speaker 1: with our fervent prayers.
Speaker 2: This is what we did. This is what Christians have
Speaker 2: always done.
Speaker 1: Why not start a burial society in your own church?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: Why not incorporate this incredible love for the departed and
Speaker 1: recover a Christian disposition towards the most sublime period of
Speaker 1: one's life, when they are loosening their tether to this
Speaker 1: earthly life and are moving into a place that we
Speaker 1: trust and pray for, of paradise in the presence of Christ.
Speaker 2: Why not? Why not?
Speaker 1: May God help you to apply your Christian faith to
Speaker 1: the death and burial of your loved ones. And may
Speaker 1: you be inspired, May you be inspired, God be with you. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: I hope you've downloaded the Patristic Nectar app on your phone.
Speaker 1: It is a treasure trove of soul nourishing content and
Speaker 1: I hope you'll consider becoming a regular donor to Patristic
Speaker 1: Nectar today