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Significance Of The Christian Funeral Service And Rituals


By Frank Brown

For a devout Christian, a funeral service is a celebration of the soul's journey into the after life. Funeral services and rituals are alleviating, owing to the strong belief that the deceased has at last found a permanent home in God's place.

Christians consider death as a happy exit from the world of grief and a passage into the world of everlasting bliss. The intensity of pain caused by the death of a near and dear one is alleviated by the very thought that the deceased is enjoying a blissful afterlife in the Lord's home with the Lord Himself. The Christian funeral rituals are conducted with these beliefs and feelings.

Usually, a Christian funeral service is conducted by the pastor. The services are often conducted inside the very church that was visited by the deceased when he was alive. Generally the services do not have casket, but when the service is being held inside a funeral home, caskets are very often present. A traditional Christian funeral service does not include viewing of the dead body at the time of service.

The funeral service is more of a memorial, in which the programmes begin with singing of hymns, a vocalist, and religious readings from the Holy Scriptures. After this comes a short elocution from the pastor and subsequently a mass prayer by all those who have assembled there.

Then the assembled people partake in the grief of family members as well as close friends and talk about their personal experiences as to how the dead person has influenced them and left a permanent impression in their minds. Nowadays, people also put up a slide show on the life of the deceased or play a video recording taken from his or her lifetime.

The conclusion of the service is the serving of refreshments at a reception conducted mostly at the church itself. People do not choose a graveside service generally, but there are some exceptional cases.

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