Suggested readings, and the running order for readings for the funeral mass can be viewed by clicking here

Singing and the Funeral Mass

We encourage everyone who is arranging the funeral of a relative or a friend to arrange for a singer and a musician to provide music at the funeral mass. This can be arranged very easily. Our parish organist Mrs Ann McNulty is usually available to play at funerals and there are a number of excellent singers in our parish who make themselves available.

Sometimes, people say that they would not like singing at the funeral mass because: "It would make it too sad." In fact, singing helps and comforts those who are grieving at a funeral mass. Music provides us with a great sense of hope and lifts our spirits at times when we are feeling low.

Music also helps the funeral mass to be a fitting celebration for the person who has died. The funeral mass is a celebration in which we say our final liturgical farewell to someone whom we loved very much. Its important for us to make that final celebration one that is worthy of the person, one that we can look back on with satisfaction. It is often our experience as priests that a funeral mass without singing is an unsatisfactory experience for the mourners. A funeral mass without singing can be very bleak and cold.

If you wish to arrange for a musician and a singer to provide music at the funeral mass please talk to the priest or the undertakers.

Funeral Eulogy

In recent times, some controversy/attention has been focused on ‘family eulogies’ at funerals in Church. A family eulogy is most appropriately given at a graveside/crematorium when the prayers of commitment are complete. Even at the reception following the funeral there is an opportunity to give your eulegy, after all the best man and father of the bride do not give their ‘few words’ during the Wedding Ceremony!

Alternatively at the Removal to the Church the evening before, there is space for someone to say ‘a few words’. At the removal, everyone present is there on behalf of the deceased and his or her family while the funeral mass is a community and public mass.
The ‘few words’ should be just that, certainly no more than 3-4 minutes in length and written out and shown to the celebrant beforehand. On occasions people have been unprepared and spoken for too long and it has caused stress to other family members. Other times what is said is inappropriate and sometimes even offensive to others present.

The priest will always include appropriate references to the life of the deceased as part of the funeral homily if you let him know some of the things you would like said.

It might be a bit dated but I think what follows is a very insightful piece on the Eulogy issue! Taken from the SUNDAY INDEPENDENT April 2, 2000.

To hear someone praise the dead can be a moving experience.  Anyone whose relative or friend has just passed away may be especially grateful for such a eulogy. Speeches from the altar by members of the family of the deceased have become common and often provide mourners with their most, abiding memory of a funeral.

But now, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Sean Brady, is strongly discouraging eulogies.  He has sent a letter to the priests of his diocese advising them to refuse, "firmly but sensitively", requests by family members to speak after Communion. His intervention may seem harsh or paternalistic.  Already it has been criticized for depriving families of a therapeutic opportunity to grieve.

But funerals are a religious event and there is a Christian argument for checking any tendency towards sorrowful indulgence or sentimentality. Some eulogies are even being transformed into a personalised ritual by the additional parading of one or more objects which had belonged to the deceased. Speeches from the altar can have mourners glancing at their watches.  The archbishop points out that a eulogy may lead to unnecessary duplication of sentiments already heard in both the priest's homily and the Prayer of the Faithful.
By leaving it up to the priest to refer to the deceased there is at least some safeguard against excess and against a sort of social injustice where, for example kind old age pensioners are buried quietly while less meritorious members of the community have praise heaped upon them.

The guidelines of the Catholic Church state that any funeral homily by a priest is to be "brief' and is to be based on the readings and be “never any kind of eulogy".  It should encourage hope in the future rather than despair about what is past. When eulogies become the norm then the absence of a eulogy can insulting, Soon we, could feel obliged to speak well of every, dead person or to listen passively while others do so, no matter how inappropriate a eulogy is in the circumstances.Dr Brady notes that other opportunities are available for acknowledging the life of the departed; for example, at the graveside, the meal afterwards or the columns of a local newspaper.
The, archbishop, also states that expectation of having to deliver a eulogy from the altar can cause unnecessary and severe emotional stress on members of the family.  His view is as reasonable as any arguable claim that eulogies are necessarily therapeutic for those who deliver them.

But it is the archbishop's final point which is perhaps the strongest although it is a sign of the times in an unsure Catholic Church that this gets tucked away discreetly after references to administrative streamlining and psychological discomfort. The archbishop gives a specific religious reason-, for excluding eulogies, namely that, "Such a practice distracts, sometimes seriously from the sacred nature of the liturgy and occasionally may be offensive to the congregation.” There is a danger that the sacred celebration for the dead may become a kind of entertainment for the living, where an experience of emotional involvement becomes more valued than the Word of God.  The purpose a Christian funeral is not review past deeds or dwell grief, but to provide an opportunity for expressing the hopes of those gathered to witness their beliefs.

Perhaps it is precisely because such beliefs have weakened, and not only among the laity, that people find consolation in the emotional engagement which is created when someone who was close to the deceased delivers a eulogy. The readings or music and songs at a funeral can have the same effect.  They can echo what is in our hearts, and the family is invited to choose what it thinks are appropriate passages from the Bible.  Here again there are rules. According to Dr Brady, and contrary to what happens in practice in some cases, “at the funeral liturgy the biblical readings may not be replaced by non-biblical readings".  Any songs should also relate to Christ's message.  However, non-biblical readings are permitted during additional Prayer services with the family.  Moves to customise religious services may reflect a lack-of confidence in fundamental religious beliefs.  No church need bend and weave simply to avoid discomforting those who wish to use its facilities.  There is a basic challenge in the Christian view of death which may be lost if funeral ceremonies are focused on the personality of the departed rather than on religious beliefs.

At the same time, too narrow an interpretation of the rules is unwise.  The Popularity of eulogies may be a sign that the present manner of conducting ceremonies does not satisfy people's expectation Of an inspiring or spiritual experience at funerals.

Dr Colm Kenny lecturer in DCU