Because God is God

A dedicated school principal died a virgin at age 58 and was buried literally untouched by human hands-without embalming, in accordance with her wish. I have no idea how her family managed to have her body viewed in a three-night wake without posing a health risk to the mourners. A former superior of mine, a widow and a doctor of medicine, at her death bed instructed her children not to cremate her body (as the children had preferred) for she believed in the resurrection of the body. Decades earlier I had heard a similar death bed wish from a man who also didn't want cremation because, as he told his children, "How can my body be resurrected if you burn me?"

With due respect to the memory of our beloved dead, we who also believe in the resurrection promised by our Lord take it for the mystery that it is. We also believe that God has the power to resurrect us, regardless of the manner our life ends-whether it be serenely at a hospital bed, alone in a remote mountain cottage and consumed by rodents, at a plane crash, on a cruise ship sinking a la Titanic, or as a foreign journalist beheaded by ISIS. Morbid thoughts, yes, but the resurrection mystery remains to be embraced.

I personally wish to be cremated-to remind one and all: ashes to ashes, dust to dust-but really it's up to those I leave behind to do what's in line with their beliefs. What's more important is how I live each day according to His will, for I so believe that should He wish to show himself to me after I die, I'm sure I will not be like Thomas who must poke His would in order to believe. Because God is God, period.