- Feb 5, 2002
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In many churches, the Holy Sepulcher once was as commonplace at Easter as the crèche was at Christmas. It isn’t anymore.
This essay is not about the theological significance of Easter or the Paschal Mystery, which makes human graves temporary (not permanent), two-way (not one-way) streets.
Nor is it about the eventual end of human graves when, at the end of the world, “all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:22), though — given what they have chosen for themselves — one can ask of the damned, “What kind of life is that?”
Nor is this essay a commentary on new American ways in death, where cremation and newer methods of bodily destruction, like alkaline hydrolysis and recomposting, increasingly treat as irrelevant the significance of a grave as a “resting place.”
No, this essay is about what once used to be a Catholic custom that seems to have fallen in recent years into disuse: the presence of representations of the Holy Sepulcher in our churches.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
This essay is not about the theological significance of Easter or the Paschal Mystery, which makes human graves temporary (not permanent), two-way (not one-way) streets.
Nor is it about the eventual end of human graves when, at the end of the world, “all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:22), though — given what they have chosen for themselves — one can ask of the damned, “What kind of life is that?”
Nor is this essay a commentary on new American ways in death, where cremation and newer methods of bodily destruction, like alkaline hydrolysis and recomposting, increasingly treat as irrelevant the significance of a grave as a “resting place.”
No, this essay is about what once used to be a Catholic custom that seems to have fallen in recent years into disuse: the presence of representations of the Holy Sepulcher in our churches.
Continued below.
The Disappearing Grave
In many churches, the Holy Sepulcher once was as commonplace at Easter as the crèche was at Christmas. It isn’t anymore.
