Bury the Dead
Hopeful Mercy by Mother Olga Yaqob
This post is one in a series on the Works of Mercy. Released on Mondays, each essay is a short reflection on one Work and one chapter of Dynamic Catholic’s book Beautiful Mercy. Read more about the series here.
At the time this reflection is written, we as a Catholic Church are still mourning our Holy Father Pope Francis. It feels fitting to return to the Mercy Monday series and the book Beautiful Mercy, an anthology compiled for his 2015 Jubilee Year of Mercy. It also feels fitting that the next work of mercy in this particular series happens to be burying the dead, something that many of us as Catholic Christians have considered in recent days, whether on the streets of Rome or on the screens of our homes.
In her reflection “Hopeful Mercy,” Mother Olga Yaqob details the more dramatic, physical call to bury the dead that she encountered growing up in war-torn Iraq. “In the midst of the darkness of violence, hatred, bloodshed, and deaths of both civilians and military personnel,” she writes, “faith in God became my anchor.” It was Matthew 25 that guided her actions at a time when so many were suffering, and the corporal works of mercy “were not only a service to others but also a much deeper encounter, in which Jesus invited his followers to him in those whom they served.”
For Mother Olga, burying the dead in particular became a constant call in a violent country that saw bodies of the deceased abandoned in prisons, and on streets, with no surviving family or loved ones to mourn them. She was charged with taking some of the unclaimed dead to her convent and preparing them for burial according to cultural custom, often in difficult physical circumstances. And yet, this call became her way to experience Calvary with our Lord, who was also abandoned by so many of his friends as he drew his last breath on the cross.
Many of us were not born into the horrifying circumstances of war that Mother Olga was, and while we of course experience the gut-wrenching emotional experience of grief at the passing of a loved one, the physical work of burying the dead for us seldom goes much further than a family funeral, a visit to a grieving neighbor, or a trip to the cemetery on the feast of All Souls. And yet Mother Olga reminds us in her reflection of a different type of death, one many of us are perhaps more frequently familiar with: spiritual death. She writes, “Through my ministry with young people, I have come to witness a different kind of death and grief - a spiritual one…The effects of sin and ignorance on faith and morality can be very dangerous to the lives of individuals, leading to confusion and poor choices, which harm the soul.”
Mother Olga offers hope and a path for those of us who witness and experience this type of death. In encountering those dying spiritually, she writes, “here too I find my way to Calvary, through the spiritual works of mercy of instructing the ignorant, comforting the afflicted, and helping those who might have been at the edge of spiritual death to come back to life and allow themselves to be found by God, who is not only the source of life but also the giver of grace for those who seek new birth in Christ through the sacrament of his mercy.”
The idea that works of mercy lead to Christ’s mercy and to Christian hope feels a fitting way to mourn Pope Francis as we remember him, and perhaps, the two Jubilee themes he gave us during his papacy (namely, of course, mercy and hope). A lucky few of us may indeed pay our respects with a pilgrimage to Rome this year, and many of us have remembered Pope Francis in prayer, such as the Novena in his memory. But much like Mother Olga, taking merciful action towards others, particularly in the example that Pope Francis gave to us, can be, in itself, a path to Christ and thus to hope in the midst of burying of the dead. May we consider the example of mercy and hope that Pope Francis set for us as we collectively mourn him specifically, but also as we support those among us grieving in the face of the physically and spiritually dead.