A Protest Against Cremation

 In the recent past, I went to a funeral of a Roman Catholic who was cremated. After the funeral, the remains were placed in an ornamental structure on the church grounds. The amount of detail that was put into the design of the structure must have cost several hundreds of thousands. It was very impressive. After seeing it, I couldn’t help but think of a Hindu phrase I once heard, “JAY MA SMASHANA KALI” (Victory to Mother Kali of the Cremation Ground).

From my perspective what I experienced at that Catholic church amounted to being at a shrine dedicated to death, to Kali.  I am very much aware that my Church allows people to be cremated. I am also aware that there are some circumstances where there is no option. However, the people using this death shrine were paying up to 10k to be there. Most of them are from some of the wealthiest families in the parish. It would make sense to me if this was on church grounds to respect people who had no options other than cremation. However, what the church was doing is a contradiction to the belief in the Resurrection.

In many of the religions of the world, the cremation of the body is the last bridge to be burned in order to be reborn into a new life. This is especially true for the Hindus who believe that the body is more or less a vehicle to get them to their next life. I guess the same could be said for most modern Christians because for them the body is something that has no lasting value. Like it is for Hindus, all that matters for the modern Christian is the spirit, which moves on to what they call heaven.

I’m not sure when in the history of my religion we became like some of the other religions of the world. We used to believe in the resurrection of the body. The burial of the body was the last proclamation of our belief in the gospel. It's where we could say, “We are coming back here”. We even have saints who verified this belief. Their bodies remain incorrupt and are awaiting the day of resurrection. For the incorrupt saints, they believed that they would be coming back here, and their evidence is a witness against those errors that we find ourselves in today.   

If you look at the gospels our Lord never taught Hinduism. He preached about the resurrection of the body and of the Heavenly Kingdom that was coming here to Earth. There was no teaching from him about moving on to the next life. There was no going to heaven when you die. He never taught what most churches preach today. Our spirit does indeed go into our Lord’s care after we die. However, it goes into his care in order to be returned to the body. Just like we see with the Theotokos in the Icon of the Dormition. Could you imagine what would have happened if the apostles cremated her? The symbolism of the Resurrection would have been destroyed!

With our bodies, we are building the kingdom of God on Earth. As he taught us, we proclaim the good news to the Creation (Mark 16:15). One day he is going to finish what we started in our bodies. He is going to renew the earth and renew whatever elements of us that remain here. He is not going to be starting over from scratch. We will be renewed, not rebuilt. We will experience the same thing our Lord experienced in his resurrection.  This is why it’s essential that we stop burning our bodies. Heaven is going to be here on earth in our body. It’s what the body was made for. It’s what our Lord will make whole again. This is why our last act as Christians should be to bury our bodies and not to destroy them.