Of bites, a banner, bugles and beauty

Yesterday morning I got my first mosquito bite of the year. May 13 is MUCH too early for mosquito bites but I'm not sure where one registers such a complaint. (Well, actually, I do know - but I've been complaining to the Creator about mosquitoes for years with no results!) I was at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery here in Concord as I presided at a committal service following a funeral Mass. It's unnerving, while you're praying aloud with 50 mourners watching you, to spot a mosquito biting your right hand which is holding the funeral ritual book. Decorum on my part meant lunch for Ms. Mosquito (only female mosquitoes bite).

But that's not the most important part of what I wanted to share with you about yesterday morning's cemetery service.

I was praying at the grave of a man who for years had served the Catholic community in Concord as a lector, a minister of the Eucharist, a choir member and a cantor for hundreds of funerals. Bernie served his nation, too, and was a veteran of WWII. For this retired Army reserves major two soldiers were present to play Taps and to fold and present the flag to the family.


Not for the first time was I struck by the solemn care and dignified gestures with which representatives of the military handle the star spangled banner. This ritual, carried out in silence, included the two soldiers approaching the casket, removing the flag, straightening and carefully folding it to a compact triangle and then bearing it to the family and presenting it to them, breaking the silence with the words: On behalf of the President of the United States and the people of a grateful nation, may I present this flag as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful service your loved one rendered this nation.

This ceremony never fails to rivet the attention of those present. This is due in part to whatever level of patriotism rests in our hearts but what holds our attention is how the ritual gestures embody and speak with such depth. It is eminently clear that these soldiers hold the flag as sacred and dear - indeed, a symbol for which they have pledged to give their lives. The ritual here does not fail to engage us.

Unfortunately, the hour of liturgical ritual which generally precedes this patriotic rite often pales in comparison. The military men and women assigned to cemetery duties perform this rite at least as often, if not more, than the typical parish priest celebrates funerals. Sadly, our funeral rites often fail to engage their participants as solidly as the flag folding at the cemetery.

The military rite is solemn, paced, deliberate, sensitive, evocative and compelling. By contrast, the funeral liturgy is, too often, casual, alternately hurried and drawn out, off the cuff, inattentive to those present, dull and and stifling. We priests would do well to study the military moment at the grave -and its impact on those present- and look at our own work in light of that.

I can't end this commentary, however, without noting something disappointing in the way the armed services now honor their dead. If you have been to such funerals and have thought that buglers are improving their performance skills, I have sad news to break for you...

For some years, when a bugler was not available, the military reps were bringing portable boom boxes which they would place ahead of time at a distance from the grave and mourners, often behind another headstone, and on which Taps would be played at the appropriate moment (just before the folding and presentation of the flag). The ruse worked unless mourners looked around to see the bugler not saw now horn in sight.

Now, something new has replaced the boom box: the Digital Bugle. On the left you see a cone-shaped device that slides into a bugle's bell and plays a high-quality recorded version of “Taps.” The bugle and device retail for $525.00.

Now, one of the military reps stands at a distance from and facing away from the grave and "plays" Taps. Watching yesterday morning, the dead giveaway that Taps was electronic was that the bugler's head, shoulders and back showed not the slightest sign of taking a breath to make the horn sing. The recording played was made on Memorial Day, 1999 at Arlington National Cemetery so you know the sound is flawless. It's also loud enough so that in an open space like a cemetery the unsuspecting listener would probably not guess that something less than authentic is happening here.

And that's the sadness: something less than authentic has made its way into a ritual whose authenticity is so compelling.

I understand that there are many funerals deserving of military honors and that the bugle corps in the several branches of the armed services may be limited in number. There is an alternative to the digital bugle. When Congress authorized the "boom box Taps in 2000," the organization Bugles Across America was formed, gathering volunteer buglers and trumpeters and making them available for live renditions of Taps. The group's web page notes: The bugler can be of any age as long as they can play the 24 notes of Taps with an ease and style that will do honor to both the Veterans, their families, and the burial detail performing the service. Let's hope that musicians will hold themselves to a high standard when discerning if they qualify among those who can play with the "ease and style" such occasions merit.

Authenticity in ritual is crucial. Authenticity is ritual's core beauty and its absence leaves us with the sham. The history of Christian liturgy is the story of rich symbols, subjected over time to minimization and the subsequent efforts to restore them to a robust fullness. One thinks of how baptismal immersion came to be reduced to a hand's scoop of water; how pouring chrism over the head of neophytes was downscaled to a thumb dipped in oil, touching a forehead; how the food of bread was reduced to dime-sized, paper thin hosts and how the cup, for centuries, was removed from the assembly's reach; how beeswax candles were replaced by oil-burning canisters; and how nature's blossoms have been so often replaced with artificial flowers.

Good ritual makes demands on those who share in it and touches deeply the hearts of those who take it seriously. Good ritual is this: beautiful signs and symbols, lifted up with style and grace, in word and song and silence, that hearts might be moved to reverence what is sacred in our midst. Striving for beauty and authenticity in ritual runs the risk of dilettantism but if pursued for holy and noble ends it serves the revered as well as those who revere. Good ritual is the work of us all: let us all call each other to that work and its beauty.

-ConcordPastor