Feel-Good Friday: Celebrating Those Who Honor a Person’s Whole Life, Even After Death

This week’s Feel-Good Friday is less “Fri-YAY!” and more reflective, and hopefully an inducement of gratitude for those who bear us up in life and hopefully in death. As I have said in past articles, the older I become the more I think about mortality. I buried my last sister in September, so that contemplation has become more pronounced. She was a pastor’s wife, so we had a rousing homegoing celebration that saw hundreds in attendance and thousands watching online. 

But what about those who die alone without family or community? Having a dignified burial is a way of honoring the life the person lived and acknowledging that their life mattered. So, this discovery of a group of compassionate students who honor the less fortunate through acts of mercy is the subject of this Feel-Good Friday.

Joseph of Arimathea was the rich Pharisee who had an empty burial tomb that had never been used. Joseph used this tomb for the body of Jesus after he had died on the cross. Joseph may well have been unaware that he was partnering with the fulfillment of prophecy, and participating in the miracle of the resurrection.

A ministry out of a Cleveland Catholic high school bears his name, and they also do the work of the divine in the midst of death. This ministry participates in a miracle of mercy to those who do not have a family to give them a proper burial, acting as pallbearers to carry the deceased’s casket to their final resting place. 

St. Ignatius High School, a Catholic school, in Cleveland has a ministry serving as pallbearers for individuals with little or no family, ensuring they are honored at their funerals. Known as the Arimathea Pallbearer Ministry, it involves about 400 students who assist at 150 to 180 funerals annually. One student shared that while the experience is deeply sad and heartbreaking, it has also helped him gain a greater appreciation for the role of family in his life.

The ministry was profiled in 2023 by the National Catholic Register for its contribution to the faith and its spiritual replication. Just a year ago, the pallbearer ministry at St. Ignatius served about 250 funerals a year, and more than 1,600 over its 20-year history. As one funeral director described it , pallbearers are not simply carrying a casket, they are carrying the physical embodiment of the deceased. 

Many Catholics are familiar with the corporal works of mercy; a plethora of ministries serve the basic needs of our fellow men and women, especially clothing the naked and feeding the hungry. But one way of meeting the material needs of the less fortunate tends to be forgotten in our time: burying the dead.

In 2003, one theology teacher at St. Ignatius Catholic High School in Cleveland decided to change that. “He just took the corporal works of mercy very, very seriously,” said Joe Mulholland, also a theology teacher at St. Ignatius, of Jim Skerl, the founder of the school’s St. Joseph of Arimathea Pallbearer Ministry. “He viewed them as a checklist: Are we actually doing these seven things?”

Skerl passed away in 2014, but his ministry lives on and has been replicated around the country, to other Midwest cities, the South, and the East Coast. Along with pallbearer services, the ministry also offers prayer and companionship to the indigent and lonely, and provides a spiritual presence at the funerals. Young men and women in their junior and senior year of high school gladly serve in this manner, and many profess to the profound impact the ministry has had on them. Adult chaperones volunteer as chauffeurs for the students, driving them to the funerals and then to the burial sites so they can fulfill their service. 

Once a year, present and past pallbearers, along with faculty and friends hold a “Mass for Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed.” In 2024, they gathered in November at Cleveland’s Potter’s Field, where the indigent of the community are buried, and honored those who have been buried in the past year. 

One of the schools that has replicated St. Ignatius’ work is St. Xavier High School in Louisville, KY. After hearing about the Arimathea ministry on NPR, teacher and youth leader Ben Kresse was inspired to start the ministry at St. Xavier. But the seed was planted even earlier than that, when Kresse attended church with a county coroner who shared the process for those who died without family and without means.

When Kresse was serving as a youth minister, he attended church with the Bluegrass State’s Jefferson County coroner, who shared with him the process for “indigent burials,” burials for those without family or the means to cover funeral expenses.

“He said, ‘We really don’t have any service for them; we might pray the Our Father, then we bury them,’” said Kresse. “And he said something that struck me: ‘Everybody comes into the world being held, and they should leave being held, and nobody holds these people.’”

What a powerful and potent image. When you are birthed from your mother’s womb you are immediately held, and held often as you grow. So, it should be the same when you leave this life. Being pro-life should be for the entire life and into death. It is a comforting thought that young men and women are being trained with these eyes of compassion, knowledge, and are giving themselves in this significant service.

 In this season of giving, as we embrace the blessings of life, family, and the joy of the season, how can we also embrace and hold space for those around us who are less fortunate, forsaken, or impoverished? We are all on a journey to the grave, so we can all be used to bear each other up on that journey. Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”