Ceremonies and rituals are activities that help us express our deepest thoughts and feelings about life’s most important events with family and friends. They are opportunities for connection and sharing.

• Baptism celebrates the birth of a child and celebrates the church’s acceptance of the child into the church family.
• Birthday celebrations honor the new year in the life of someone we love.
• Weddings affirm to others the love shared by two people.
• Funerals connect us to others experiencing the loss of a loved one.
• Funerals provide an opportunity for us to express our appreciation as well as our thoughts and feelings about the death of that person.
• Funerals provide an opportunity to find support and comfort from family and friends while dealing with the difficult challenges of loss.

The funeral ceremony helps us acknowledge the reality of the death. It encourages the expression of grief consistent with the culture’s values and allows us to embrace our faith and beliefs about life and death. A funeral offers continuity and hope for the living.

Our culture wants quick fixes to everything and some people today have lost sight of the importance of a meaningful funeral.

We will suffer if we don’t stop to realize the importance of tradition and ceremony. We will suffer if we don’t take time to connect to share the importance an individual life has in our existence.

It is as important today as it has always been to find reconciliation in grief and to move on to find continued meaning in life and living.