The Immaculata and Our Lady of Peace Cemetery (2/9)
This is the second of a nine-part series explaining various aspects of the floor plan of a church. Holy Mother Church has deliberately filled her buildings with great symbolism; this series will introduce some of the many facets involved in designing and building this home for the Immaculata.
NB: These images and renderings are still approximations of the final design. They are meant to give general knowledge and perspective rather than a precise and final version of what will be built.
“Our Lady of Peace Cemetery”
Calvary and the sepulcher have always been linked. Christians are promised the hope of the resurrection as a reward for their fidelity to sacrifice. It is thus eminently fitting that the altar of sacrifice in the Immaculata will be built close to the resting place of so many of its faithful at Our Lady of Peace Cemetery.
It has always been a distinctive part of Christian tradition for the bodies of the faithful departed to be buried in cemeteries. With Our Lord’s revelation of the resurrection of the body, Christians took great pains to respect the remains of those whose lives had not been lost, only changed, as the requiem liturgy confidently proclaims.
From the catacombs of the first centuries to the consecrated cemeteries of later years, Christians have always seen their final resting spots as sacred places of hope and not as unclean places, as did the pagans or even men of Old Testament times. Many parishes of Christendom witnessed a cemetery linked with the parish church so that the Christian soul would find its final resting spot just yards away from the parish church where it had been born into and sustained in supernatural life.
Because a Catholic cemetery is consecrated, its limits are always clearly shown by a fence or some hedgerows and a few gates. Once one has passed into the cemetery, as in a church, silence and respect should reign as the Christian goes to pray for and deliver the departed. The significance of a cemetery is even more evident when performing the corporal work of mercy of burying the dead when the silence of death is all too resounding and its stillness so palpable.
Our Lady of Peace Cemetery is already the resting place for many of our beloved parishioners and pioneers of Tradition in St. Marys. The unbaptized infants have a place specially dedicated for them, while a section of the cemetery will soon be reserved to clerics whose final judgment will be more stringent than that of the laity. Once the Immaculata is built, family and friends will be able to go on foot immediately from the church through the gates of the cemetery and lay to rest their loved ones.
By building the Immaculata near our cemetery, we will not only be able to build a beautiful church but will have an even greater reason to make many needed improvements to our cemetery – its roads and boundaries. A soul praying graveside, in the shadows of the Immaculata, will be able to contemplate the full ambit of a Christian life as he sees the church in the distance – from life to death; and a trip to Mass – the Calvary of the altar – will be fittingly accompanied with a view of the sepulcher – the place of the resurrection of the dead.
