Your Questions About Cremation and Burial: Answered

one of the things shoot sorry now we messed it all up he's falling down i don't know i need haircut maybe i need haircut hi my name is father mike schmitz and this is ascension presents so i made a video about uh cremation or scattering ashes and there are a lot of questions that came up out of that and i thought that is great in fact like truly i thought the fact that this is um a question that you know is maybe sensitive to some people is question that people might disagree on i think it's really really good because one of the things that highlights i think it highlights is that people are thinking about death i don't think that as a cultural generally speaking we think about death as much as we ought to i mean it is the one thing every one of us is going to do at some point and it's and the moment of our death of course is kind of a big deal it's because our life your life matters our life matters therefore our eternity matters and so the fact that people have an opinion about um what are they going to do with my body when i die is pretty great i think i mean also i think people have an opinion about or they have a desire for what they what they want others to do with their body i think it highlights saying again this might be me spinning some straw into gold or maybe even just kind of like putting a positive spin on it but i really think that there's a possibility that uh the fact that someone says i i desire this for my body reveals that you recognize the body is you which is the whole point of the church's teachings right it's that sense of saying that your soul is you your body is you death is not the soul is now free from the body death is what i remember dr peter crave called it an obscenity death is an obscenity why because think about all scary movies not all of them but many of the scary movies are about the body and soul separating what's a ghost it's a soul without a body what is a a zombie a zombie is a body without a soul that sense of a mummy same thing there you go um but but that sense of my soul is not freed from my body that's not a catholic christian way to look at it my body and soul are separated and that is again according to dr peter grave and obscenity because it's not how human beings are supposed to be human beings what we are body and soul together so we believe in the resurrection of the body at some point in the future you and i are going to be uh resurrected we're going to be reunited with our bodies our souls and our bodies once again together jesus says some for the resurrection of glory right and some for the resurrection of damnation but every one of us will spend eternity back in our bodies body and soul together now um at the same time again while i said that sometimes people having an opinion on this whole thing can reveal that uh they recognize the goodness of the body that could be the case it also and i just propose this with as much gentleness as possible there can kind of be a certain my way like and i just this is what i want what they're gonna do with my body with my cremains when i die that's kind of a problem that's kind of a problem now someone could say well what he's saying the church is saying well then do it our way and that seems the same i'll say maybe but when i say i want it my way that's my preference when the church says we're going to do it this way it's based off of a principle and the principle is the integrity of the body and a belief in the resurrection of the dead right it's the integrity of the body the goodness of the body is why the church has its rules about when it comes to burying the body in sacred gown when it comes to even with cremation and not scattering the ashes now again with that being said the principle of principle of the integrity of the body is what it's paramount right it's it's essential now there was a time when cremation itself wasn't even allowed in the catholic church um and that i talked about that in a video where we talked about how disciplines change um church discipline right can change uh when we change in culture so what had happened was originally when here's the gospel going out to all the world and christians encountered cultures that as part of their funeral rights they would burn up right burn the the bodies of those people who had died the the problem wasn't that um the body is disintegrated that's going to happen naturally the point is that um what they're saying what a culture like that was saying when they burned a body up is they're saying we're setting the soul free from the cage or the trap of the body and so the church said okay christians that's not what we what we believe we believe that body and soul have a unity and an integrity together and therefore you may not and must not um give the impression to the world that you believe this the body is a trap or a cage for the soul and so that's why the church banned cremation now in the 60s 1960s the church said okay we believe we know that there are very few people right now maybe there are some people out there but it's not the dominant cultural mindset that says i'm going to be cremated because i want to free my soul from my body therefore the church said okay well this the culture has changed therefore as long as you treat the cremated remains or the cremains that's actually a term that remains with dignity meaning enter the body in the ground in sacred ground the information is allowed it's never recommended but it's allowed now i remember her talking to one of my sisters who said that she wanted to be cremated not because of any any reason of like i want to set my soul free from my body but because she said i don't want to wake up in a coffin like one of our fears i don't want to wake up in a coffin i remember thinking or saying actually but you would want to wake up in an oven i mean something to think about that's what i'm saying also when they embalm a body i'm pretty sure they make sure that that person is like fully dead not mostly dead but fully dead anyways back to how we take care of the body so of course um a body will naturally disintegrate in the earth that's just what's going to happen so we believe in the resurrection of the body it doesn't mean like that that you need to stay intact or else god won't know what to do with your atoms i mean i think what is it every seven years we have we go through we the body replaces itself like replaces every one of your cells every seven years maybe three years look it up i'm sure there's a thing called google that you can find out all that information about but we realize that what god's going to do is he doesn't like collect every cell that ever belonged to you and reassemble that into your resurrected body in some mysterious and miraculous way the body you get back is your body even though the cycle of cells is x number of years long and we got that but what we do with the body that's the important part of course your body is going to disintegrate but what we do with the body is we treat it with dignity always treat it with dignity so whether that is burying it in the ground or it being burned and cremated and then buried in the ground that's that's the principle behind the whole thing is honoring the body knowing that yes the body will disintegrate on its own most likely eventually no some people have asked about like what about uh bodies that are like you know burned up accidentally your body's an explosion about hiroshima or nagasaki one of those kind of situations like again that has nothing to do with how we inter those bodies we if we could find you know the remains of that person of those people who had been killed in an explosion or in a house fire or at something like the atomic bomb then yes of course you would treat those those bodies or those remains whatever you found with as much dignity and reverence as you possibly could to honor that person under their body but i mean there are some situations where you you don't think you can do that's one one of those things the last two things two things is can i donate my body to science can i donate my organs the catholic church says yes there's there is a if you're you're driving motivation if the motivating factor behind this whole thing is charity right is here's my heart it's still good i donate to that to the next person who needs a heart or my liver kidneys obviously organs donate those things why because that is an act of charity motivating the whole thing plus as long as the body is interred with reverence ultimately so you could donate your body to a medical school we have medical school right i'm looking at it right now um they have cadaver lab in cadaver lab those of you who are doctors or doctors to be you would treat that cadaver with dignity you would treat that cadaver with a sense of in some ways you could say reverence even as you are a cutting that could ever open and learning about the human body i remember at one point um my physician family they talked about in their first day in cadaver lab saying before they you know cut into the body saying hey can we just take a moment of silence and just like honor the fact that this was someone's son or this was someone's daughter and i just think like that would be such a i know one of my siblings said that and everyone in the group was like yeah let's do that another one of my siblings said that and everyone was looked at them very weird but i think it's a good impulse the impulse is this is again someone's body this is someone's son this is someone's daughter this might have been someone's mom or dad or brother or sister this was someone's friend this was someone right even though all there is left is their body here so yes you can donate your body to science you can donate your organs um the last thing i mentioned last time that we don't keep that those cremains in an urn or in a locket or any kind of like you don't have a little keepsake about that in fact we're prohibited from doing that now some people say what about relics of saints great question camper two things one is those relics of saints are kept in reliquaries right they're kept they're meant to be kept in holy places uh in in places that are kind of like being buried in a holy holy ground um or in an altar they're placed in a holy place they're meant to be treated like that the other thing is the church has said you know there there was this ancient practice of as dismembering essentially those saints and having those relics of those saints and the church relatively recently but in its living history has said yet don't do that anymore so the church has actually asked us not to do that with any recent saints is to let their bodies be intact as they are let them naturally disintegrate as they are but then keep them together as they are so that's kind of one of those things now here's the whole upshot of the whole deal if even right now you're like okay i got the reasons you told me all about the rules and stuff i still want to do it my way that's really good why because then it reveals it reveals this thing in my heart and it's in it's in your heart so my heart is in all of our hearts and that thing is yeah but i want to do it my way yeah but i want what i want we recognize that you know that song by frank sinatra i did it my way that's the theme song of hell the church is asking the church your mother our mother my mother our teacher the church is asking us the church the body of christ is asking us hey when it comes to your death when it comes to you being laid to rest we believe that it is best and most reverent the most honoring of what we know to be true to do it like this and to not do it like that will you trust us and that's the big question i can say i could trust god i totally trust god i'll do whatever god asked me but what if god asks us through the church do it like this not like that then i have the moment of truth right right oh wait is it my will or god is at your will because you know it's will the church church has this yeah but we know this jesus said the apostles who right now the modern church are the successors to the apostles he who hears you hears me he rejects you rejects me and so we know this right this is kind of like a when it grates against us it's really really good because it reveals okay lord that's my heart help me help me to love help me to walk help me to to be teachable and that's this moment anyways that's what i got for us hopefully we won't talk about scattering ashes anymore or any of those things okay last thing but my parent asked me to do this thing it was their last wish they was in their will you don't have to do it i don't know about the will thing that's a legal thing but you don't have to do it if your parents said um after i die i want you to rob a bank would you do it no so you don't have to scatter someone's ashes just because they asked to asked you to if you know that it is against the what you can do as a catholic christian okay that makes sense anyways as i said this is a long video for crying out loud my name is father mike smith this is ascension presents god bless

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 342,115

Keywords: ascension, ascension press, ascension presents, fr. Mike, father mike, catholic advice, fr. mike schmitz, fr. Mike schmidt, father mike schmitz, michael schmitz, fr. Mike advice, burying the dead, catholic cremation, can catholics scatter their ashes, catholic teaching on cremation, pray for the dead, visit the cemetary, catholic cemetaries, catholic teaching on death, donate your body to science, catholic saints relics, relics of saints, cremation, can I be cremated?

Id: UAgegUFHx4g

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022