Diocese of Down & Dromore

Ash Wednesday falls this week, with its unwelcome reminder to most of us: ‘You are dust and to dust you will return', and the sense that there's something we should be giving up for the forty days of Lent. This year, whatever we give up, there is something I suggest all of us might appropriately consider doing during those forty days: thinking about our own funeral! For some, the time of our death may be near. It may even take place this Lent; and we know we must prepare. For others, who are in the peak of health and strength, it might seem decades away -we feel we will live for ever!

Our funeral will probably be the last summing up of our lives. We won't be there to organize it, but those near and dear to us may well search the house from top to bottom to see whether we have left instructions about what is to be done. Is the funeral to be at home, or in a church, or perhaps even a secular event?. What were our favourite hymns or songs or pieces of music?... Who is to speak...?  Was there a particular passage from the Bible we would like read?...

My suggestion to you this Lent is that, in recognition that death can come to any of us at any time, we sit down for half an hour with a friend or a pastor, and consider how we would like to be ‘fare-welled' from this earth. It may be hard to do, it may be sobering, but it may also put our lives into a real and eternal perspective. It may raise real and significant questions of faith which we need to resolve. But, just like the writing of our wills, it is something which we should responsibly attend to.

At the end of the day, it leads us to that all-important question: What lies at the centre of our lives? The other ‘funeral question' is ‘What will we put on the gravestone?' In other words, what sums up ‘me', and my purpose here on earth?

May all of us who in the end are ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust' have a reflective and valuable Lent, which leads to the assurance of the resurrection in Jesus Christ.