Impressions of a priest’s funeral

  • On April 20 and 21, 2005, Holy Trin­ity Ortho­dox Church per­formed the funeral ser­vices required for a priest for Fr. John Platko. The quotes are from those ser­vices, and my thoughts are interspersed.

    In faith and hope and love,
    in meek­ness and purity and priestly worth,
    uprightly you dis­charged your sacred func­tions, O mem­o­rable one.
    There­fore the eter­nal God whom you served
    Shall Him­self estab­lish your spirit
    In a place of bright­ness and beauty, where the right­eous rest,
    And you will receive par­don and great mercy at the Judg­ment Day of Christ

    I didn’t know Fr. John as well as I would’ve liked. My impres­sions of him over the few months I’ve been at this church and the times that we talked was of a quiet man, some­one with a musi­cal bent, some­one so serene that he seemed to already have one foot in the next world, but whose placid blue eyes still con­tained a mea­sure of deter­mi­na­tion that I wouldn’t have coun­ter­manded lightly. It wasn’t until I heard the remarks of those closer to him amongst his fam­ily, friends and the church where he had been parish priest for over 25 years that I heard that he also had a slap­stick sense of humor, that he presided over an epic mud-fight in youth camp, that he gen­er­ally enjoyed all of his life. Then I was con­di­tion­ally jeal­ous of those who had known him bet­ter. I’ve been blessed to have such spir­i­tual fathers myself, and I can’t imag­ine how I could part with any of them. I wouldn’t be able to sum them up for oth­ers as well as those at the funeral did for Fr. John. How much is con­tained in the anec­dotes I might sum­mon up, how much I would try to con­vey of what the slight­est remark or impres­sion meant to me — but always I would know that you just had to be there.

    ***

    Ode IV
    O Christ — Mas­ter, Sav­ior, ten­derly com­pas­sion­ate — mer­ci­fully grant Thy man­sions of light unto this Thy ser­vant, who through repen­tance before he died burned before Thee as a shin­ing light.

    Kathisma hymn – tone 6
    Truly all things are van­ity.
    Life is but a shadow and a dream.
    For in vain does every­one born on earth trou­ble him­self, as the Scrip­tures say.
    When we have gained the world, we take up our abode in the grave,
    Where kings and beg­gars lie down together,
    Give rest, there­fore, to Thy ser­vant departed this life,
    O Christ our God,
    For Thou lovest mankind.

    Dormition iconThe hall was filled to capac­ity Wednes­day night, with peo­ple spilling into the narthex. At the con­clu­sion of the ser­vice, the bishop and clergy filed out fol­lowed by parish­ioners. I could just glimpse them pass­ing by through the peo­ple that obstructed the view from the choir’s loca­tion. I was brought out of my own wool-gathering by the incon­gruity of see­ing one man car­ry­ing an angelic-looking baby. It was fast asleep, and the light of the set­ting sun com­ing through the win­dow made it look too white and per­fect to be real. It was so out of place with the prayers and hymns as to be jar­ring, and yet it also had that sur­pris­ing ele­ment of recog­ni­tion. Because it made me think of the icons of the Dor­mi­tion, where Christ is seen look­ing at the body of His vir­gin mother in repose, at the same time that He holds a tiny child-version of her, show­ing that He holds her soul lib­er­ated from her earthly body and ever-young. As it will be one day with all of us.

    ***

    Do not for­get me, my beloved brethren
    When you sing to the Lord,
    But call to mind our broth­er­hood,
    And pray fer­vently to God,
    That with the right­eous the Lord will give me rest.

    from Ode V
    Lo, now we behold him who lies here, but shall never lie before us any more. Lo, already his tongue is stilled. And lo, his mouth has ceased to speak. Farewell, O my firends, my chil­dren. Farewell, O brethren. Farewell, O my com­rades, for I go forth upon my way. But make com­mem­o­ra­tion of me with the song: Alleluia!

    Mem­ory eter­nal. That’s the Ortho­dox expres­sion that cov­ers all the other things that we would like to say con­cer­ing the deceased, our ver­sion of “Rest in peace.” Is anyone’s mem­ory really eter­nal? Not on this earth, to be sure. The Great Pyra­minds of Egypt and the Taj Mahal were all built to try to guar­an­tee that a bur­ial site would always com­mend cer­tain dead to the liv­ing, and yet do we remem­ber them? We can’t do any­thing eter­nally — only God can do that. But Father John will seem to be with us, I’m sure.

    When we sang the Pre-sanctified Liturgy on Thurs­day morn­ing, the choir sang the ver­sion of “Let My Prayer Arise” that he com­posed, his name lightly pen­cilled onto the page at the upper right by choir mem­bers when he neglected to add it him­self. The piece is com­plex and offers none of the ordi­nary sorts of har­monies that allow choirs to mail it in. It has to be done per­fectly to offer up its gifts of cas­cad­ing melodies, dimin­ished chords and emo­tive sus­pense and mys­tery. But when it is done per­fectly, it does the job of that hymn — telling our ears that we are now com­ing closer to heaven. In these things, he’ll be remem­bered. In the look and feel of the church he helped bring into exis­tence. In the fam­ily he leaves. In the hearts of so many peo­ple. His eter­nal mem­ory is for God alone. We only remem­ber as well as we can.

    ***

    Exa­pos­ti­lar­ion
    Now I am at rest.
    Now I have found peace.
    I have escaped cor­rup­tion.
    I have passed from death to life.
    Glory to Thee, O Lord.

    Verses of St. John of Dam­as­cus – Tone 1
    What plea­sure in life is not mixed with grief?
    What earthly glory endures for­ever?
    All things are fee­ble shadow and delud­ing dreams.
    Death sweeps them away in a sin­gle moment.
    But in the light of Thy face, O Christ, and in the sweet­ness of Thy beauty,
    Give rest to him whom Thou hast cho­sen,
    For Thou alone lovest mankind.

    As we were com­ing close to the time of com­mu­nion at the Pre-sanctified Liturgy, we said the prayer for those about to com­mune, one which men­tions our atti­tude of awe and rev­er­ence with regard to the Gifts, and reminds us to say in response, “I am the chief of sin­ners.” But at this point, the choir mem­ber behind me mis­pro­nounced the word and said, “sun­ner.” I was going to ignore it — espe­cially in light of the sobri­ety of the envi­rons. But when I glanced back at her, I could see sup­pressed mirth in her eyes.
    “Sun­ners?” I whis­pered to her.
    She shrugged.
    “What’s a sun­ner?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “But you’re their chief.”

    By virtue of our long usage to the occa­sional light­ness to be found in even the most dire Ortho­dox ser­vice, we didn’t gig­gle or trou­ble oth­ers. We both found a glint of the divi­sion of light and shadow that allows us to hymn the dead and know that we’ll go on liv­ing. We went back to the ser­vice and picked up where we had left off, but my mind was a lit­tle less tired and my feet hurt a lit­tle less. From what I hear of Fr. John, I assume that’s the way he would have wanted it. I would hope that peo­ple at my funeral ser­vice would do the same.

    ***

    The Last Kiss – tone 2
    Come, let us give the last kiss unto the dead,
    ren­der­ing thanks unto God,
    For he has van­ished from among his kin and presses onward to the grave,
    and he trou­bles him­self no longer with van­i­ties,
    or with the flesh, which suf­fers sore dis­tress.
    Where now are his kins­folk and his friends?
    Lo, we are parted!

    Let us beseech the Lord that He will give him rest.
    Unto what shall our life be com­pared?
    Truly, to a flower or a vapor or the dew of the morn­ing.
    Come, there­fore, let us gaze intently at the grave.
    Where is the beauty of the body, where is its youth?
    Where are the eyes and the fleshly form?
    Like the grass they have all per­ished; they all have been destroyed.
    Come, there­fore, let us bow down in hum­ble sub­mis­sive­ness with tears before the feet of Christ.

    This is the song that the choir sang over and sing as peo­ple came to pay their last respects at the cas­ket and receive a bless­ing from Arch­bishop JOB. I believe that this song is the same that is sung for any Ortho­dox funeral at this point. And it’s rough, man. It’s the kind of thing that has made me leave explicit instruc­tions to Greg to tell the non-Orthodox in my fam­ily — espe­cially my mother, who has an absolute loathing of funer­als — that they don’t have to attend, that they can wish me well apart from these prayers said by my church com­mu­nity. Because I’m not sure that it’s some­thing for the faint of heart to approach a dear face that lies utterly immo­bile and com­posed in a way no liv­ing face is and hear, “Where is the beauty of the body, where is its youth? Where are the eyes and the fleshly form?” Given that the words were prob­a­bly penned in the days before bod­ies were embalmed as well as today and open cas­kets were the norm, I can’t imag­ine what thoughts they might have pro­voked. Maybe it just seems grotesque, or bar­baric. But it comes on the heels of hours of poetry con­cern­ing the blessed­ness of eter­nal rest, the invin­ci­bil­ity of the devoted soul, our hope in Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion. The words aren’t meant to be cruel — they’re meant to save us and allow us to open our eyes when we would wish to keep them shut.

    ***

    At the grave­side
    Open, O earth, and receive the body formed from you by the hand of God, and again return­ing to you as to its mother. What has been made in His image, the Cre­ator has already reclaimed. Receive, then, this body as your own.

    These were the last words of the ser­vice. Or ser­vices, rather. At the time we heard Arch­bishop JOB say these words over a flower-bedecked cas­ket that was poised over its grave, we had been to two hours of a mod­i­fied Ves­pers ser­vice on Wednes­day night, three hours of a Pre-sanctified Liturgy and the lov­ing speeches of those who knew Fr. John well on Thurs­day morn­ing, a funeral pro­ces­sion to the ceme­tery and the bring­ing of the cas­ket to the grave­side accom­pa­nied by sev­eral more songs and prayers. You’d think there wouldn’t have pos­si­bly been any­thing else to think or feel or say. And yet, after the bishop left and some­one else for­mally dis­missed us, no one moved. As I said, I hardly knew him — I cer­tainly have had more con­ver­sa­tions with gro­cery store clerks and long-distance clients than I did with him — but I didn’t want to go either.

    I haven’t been to many funer­als yet. I’m 45. I can only assume that in the next 20 or 40 years or what­ever the Lord gives me, I’ll see many more. And maybe I’ll get used to the shock of real­iz­ing that this is it for the earthly por­tion — what Abp. JOB called “the dusty man” — of the per­son you knew. You’re at their grave — they stay; you go. After all the words, all the liturgy and solemn rubrics, it’s still hard. It seems wrong to leave them, but it’s our human inher­i­tance. On Thurs­day after­noon, we all man­aged it, of course, after a minute or two. One by one, we all touched the cof­fin and crossed our­selves and left. His mem­ory we pray will be eter­nal before God; his remains belong to the earth. May God grant us years in which to repent, wis­dom to redeem our time and many loved ones to sing us away when it’s our turn.

    Mem­ory eternal.


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    April 23rd, 2005 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Fr. Elias 04.23.2005

    Grace,

    What a beau­ti­ful arti­cle in mem­ory of Fr. John. May his mem­ory be eter­nal!
    Thanks

    Fr. Elias

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