If you are faced with a death in your family, contact the parish office immediately, 985-892-3177. The clergy are prepared to assist you both with compassionate ministry and managing the details for burial. Funerals for persons who have been active members of the parish are most appropriately held in the Church.

The clergy are reluctant to conduct funerals at funeral homes and the norm is using the consecrated space of the Church or Chapel to affirm a Christian understanding of this important occasion. Please do not set the time for the funeral before contacting the clergy.

The Memorial Garden of Christ Episcopal Church is designed in response to the wishes of many members of this parish family to have their mortal remains at their death interred in an appropriate and dignified resting place.

For baptized persons, the consecrated grounds of the Church is the most fitting place for burial; and cremation, which makes this possible, is fully in accord with the teaching of our Church and is an increasingly widespread custom.

Christians believe that at death life is not ended but changed. Thus, the liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy rooted in the resurrection of Christ. As Jesus was raised from the dead, so shall we be likewise raised to new life in Him. The Burial office is marked by joy in the certain conviction that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35) Of course, there is grief because the love we have for each other in Christ brings sorrow when we are separated by death.