From lamentation to alleluia: An interpretation of the theology of the present-day Byzantine-rite funeral service analyzed through its practical relationship to bereaved persons

The dissertation's Chapter One focuses on the 'shape' of the Byzantine-rite Funeral Service for Lay-persons (= BF), an ordo whose contents (presented in Greek text with parallel English translation in Appendix I) were effectively canonized by the advent of printed euchologies in the sixteenth century. Amongst western communities of Byzantine-rite Christians (as indeed, increasingly, in Byzantine-rite homelands), this 'traditional' ordo is often abbreviated by the omission or condensation of much of its psalmody and hymnography. Chapter Two prepares for my intended interpretation and analysis of BF's complex 'Text' that incorporates intertwining penitential and resurrectional themes and is composed of the foregoing assemblage of texts, music and ritual. In laying out elements of my own methodology for interpreting and analyzing BF's liturgically-mediated theology, Chapter Two opens by insisting (following a lead from American liturgiologist, Joyce Ann Zimmerman) that BF in its entirety---texts, setting, music, and ritual---can and must be 'read' holistically as a performative 'Text' (with upper-case 'T'), having its own language and 'sign systems'; such an approach accords well with contemporary hermeneutical theories. The first of these readings, namely the interpretive endeavour to uncover BF's 'intended sense,' occupies Chapter Three. Although this operation is relatively time-consuming, its conclusions are straight-forward. BF encompasses a number of sombre 'themes of lamentation' (lament for a mythic 'Paradise Lost'; separation from and farewell to the deceased; impending judgment; and memento mori) that are set alongside other, more hopeful 'themes of celebration' (rest from the cares of life; hope of a future resurrection; and unending life in God's 'Eternal Memory'). In Chapter Four, I prepare for undertaking an analytical 'second reading' of 'BF-as-Text' (in Chapter Five) that will try and justify, from a practical pastoral standpoint the presence in BF of a 'lamentation layer'; the case against BF's detractors is to be strengthened by demonstrating how lamentation, interpreted as theologically justifiable in Chapter Three, is also pastorally essential to BF's 'human adequacy'. Psychologically, the bereaved face the need to try and accomplish their so-called "grief work" (Freud's trauerarbeit ) which dictates that an eventual recovery from bereavement is predicated on overcoming: (1) denial of the reality of a particular death; (2) suppression of thoughts and feelings regarding the deceased; (3) unhealthy clinging to the deceased's presence and memory; and (4) stagnation (a reluctance to invest in new relationships and projects). Sociologically, it can be shown that North American mourners inhabit a society that is dominated by three major distortions (from a Christian perspective) of death's significance: a widespread 'denial of death' (well described by Philippe Aries); an attempted 'taming of death' (through the 'death-awareness' movement); and a 'triumph of death' (manifested by indulgence in risk-taking behaviours and by the advocacy of such practices as euthanasia and assisted suicide). Anthropologically, following the schema proposed by van Gennep's description of life's significant passages, mourners' transition from 'separation' to 'reincorporation' appears especially difficult in societies like ours that no longer accord special status to mourners nor prescribe methods for their passage through the difficult time of death-induced loss. It is out of this milieu of WB that Byzantine-rite mourners encounter the paradoxical 'lamentation-to-Alleluia' paradigm proposed to them by BF, a meeting that I attempt to characterize in Chapter Five. (Abstract shortened by UMI.