By Metropolitan Nektarios of Hong Kong
After the cremation of the body of a journalist and presenter, I read quite a few comments: some gave a defense against cremation, others supportive of the performance of a funeral service for those who are to be cremated.
Personally, I found something I read in a television program’s “chyron” to be disturbing: “reactions to the presenter’s cremation are intensifying.”
What does it mean that reactions are intensifying, and who is reacting?
Some people who play at being ecclesiastical journalists and create artificial tensions on television programs?
Or others who cash in their atheism on the payrolls of TV channels?
And what is the aim of this kind of reporting?
It is to such vulgarities that we should react.
Matters concerning the funeral service and burial are simple and have already been clarified since Apostolic times.
The Church linked the funeral service with the burial of the body, and burial she linked with the Resurrection.
So strong is this connection that during the first three centuries of persecutions, the pagan persecutors burned the bodies of the martyrs so that they “would not rise again.”
That was as much as they understood, and those foolish things they did.
Within the Church there was never any discussion of any other treatment of the dead body.
Except in recent decades, because — under the influence of erroneous decisions of the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants — we wish to dismantle and interpret at will everything that Tradition has preserved.
Now, if some church people wish for us to sit down and philosophize about burial and cremation, we can do so for hours and days.
But the practice of the Church is given and non-negotiable.
Therefore, if someone who does not consider himself a member of the Church chooses cremation, he does well.
I do not judge him, nor do I comment on his action. I respect his freedom.
If someone who does not consider himself a member of the Church chooses cremation, and his family for its own reasons desires an ecclesiastical service, then I have a problem.
I respect the decision and the freedom of the departed person and I do not do something that he did not desire and rejected.
If someone claims to be a member of the Church and desires the cremation of his body, then he is making a serious mistake.
The Church has no such tradition, nor does she teach such things.
There are also exceptions (situations which I encounter in the Metropolis of Hong Kong and the Far East):
Cases of Christians who die in countries where burial is prohibited.
Or other cases where the departed wished for an ecclesiastical burial but the family rejects it.
In these cases I alone (or a cleric of the Metropolis) perform the funeral service in the church and render the proper ecclesiastical farewell to the brethren who have fallen asleep.
Finally, to the claims of some that a certain bishop “applies oikonomia” and performs funeral services for those who are to be cremated, I reply that I do not judge what decisions each bishop makes in his own diocese.
Each bishop is accountable to his Synod and to the Great High Priest, Christ.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
