PARTICIPATION LEAFLET FOR THE ASSEMBLY

We recognize that people attend funerals from a wide spectrum of religious traditions and different levels of practice in the faith. Our desire is to help those who will attend the funeral to participate as much as possible.

As a means toward this goal, we provide congregational programs for funerals at our parish, free of charge to the family. This helps each worshiper to understand the structure of our liturgy, to locate songs in our hymnal, and to provide additional texts, as needed. A sample program in .pdf for can be found by clicking here.

We suggest not printing names of family/friends who will take on an additional role during mass, such as lector, eucharistic minister, etc. Most importantly from our experience, we find that changes often occur the morning of the funeral when designated persons feel they cannot fulfill their role due to the emotional stress of the morning. Secondly, it’s best to avoid having the handout look like a theater program listing "the participants." In Catholic theology, we all are participants in liturgy.