Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul hosted an end-of-life seminar Oct. 7 to offer information on funeral planning, pre-planning with funeral homes and cemeteries, medical assistance, veterans’ benefits, financial issues and related topics. Speakers at the event emphasized that advanced planning includes making and updating wills, selecting a funeral home and choosing burial sites, but that there are other important factors.
To illustrate a point, Gary Pearson from event co-sponsor O’Halloran and Murphy Cremation and Funeral Services in St. Paul cited similarities between funeral planning and wedding planning, such as choosing a venue and Scripture readings. “We take months to plan a wedding, yet we take maybe 24 hours or so at the time of death to plan out one of the most important events of our lives,” Pearson said, according to a press release. At a time of loss, “scrambling around the house, trying to find documents shouldn’t be one of the things we have to contend with.”
Father Patrick Hipwell, Nativity’s pastor, stressed the importance of planning, and shared the experiences of parishioners who hadn’t done enough of it.
“Plan, plan, plan,” he said.
Funeral Planning:
- Catholic cemeteries bury the poor and forgotten
- A pastor’s funeral advice for the living: ‘Plan, plan, plan’
- Pope to honor fallen soldiers at American cemetery near Rome
- Catholic cemeteries bury the poor and forgotten
- How should ashes properly be handled after cremation?
- Neglected works of mercy: burying, praying for forgotten dead
