Prayers3

Thank you Shelley Kiernan

Burial.(Poem)

Author/s: Shelley Kiernan
Issue: Fall, 2001

BURIAL

Let them fall into the black sea water wrapped in their flags

Let the long boats ride the surface of the waves as the dead fall slowly to the sand floor

Each self overtaken in its wooden box

Each soul with its glassy underwater eye

Slips into an abandoned shell and begins its crabbed walk across the ocean floor

Shelley Kiernan is a poet who lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband and four children.

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©Archdiocese of Baltimore

The cremated remains of the body may be properly buried at sea in the urn, coffin or other container in which they have been carried to the place of committal. When a body, or the cremated remains of a body are buried at sea, the Committal prayer found at number 406 § 4 is used:

Lord God, by the power of your Word you stilled the chaos of the primeval seas, you made the raging waters of the Flood subside, and calmed the storm on the sea of Galilee. As we commit the body (earthly remains)

of our brother (sister) N. to the deep, grant him/her peace and tranquility until that day when he/she and all who believe in you will be raised to the glory of new life promised in the waters of baptism. We ask this through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.

-excerpted from the Newsletter of the NCCB Committee on the Liturgy (July, 1999) <<Archdiocesan Bulletin #70 07/23/99 >>

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Catholic Prayer

Lord God,
by the power of your Word
you stilled the chaos of the primeval seas,
you made the raging waters of the Flood subside,
and calmed the storm on the sea of Galilee.
As we commit the body (earthly remains)
of our brother (sister) N. to the deep,
grant him/her peace and tranquility
until that day when he/she
and all who believe in you
will be raised to the glory of new life
promised in the waters of baptism.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.

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" As we commit the body of our brother/sister to the deep, grant him/her peace and tranquility until that day when
he/she and all who believe in you will be raised to the glory of new life promised in the waters of baptism,"

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