You can now avail of the Columbary vaults by giving your donation. The NSDA PARISH COLUMBARY is located at the Himlayang Katoliko, General Luna Street, San Mateo Rizal.
It is a given that burial pre-supposes a belief in the afterlife, otherwise we’d be no different from the ancient Persian who left their dead on some open elevation to be feasted on as carrion by vultures and other such scavengers. This particular practice doesn’t lend itself to our more “respectful” attitude towards our departed, however much we would like to find an acculturative excuse or justification for it is in the spirit of universal hopefulness for continuance in a more evolved “other” life.
Be that as it may, mention of the pyramids of Egypt, the catacombs of Rome, the Pantheon and dozens of other burial places hallowed and otherwise argues for the strength and persistence worldwide of this longing to awake once more to a newer life (whether in Christ or for the pagans, under the aegis of whatever duty they’ve put their hopes in. Here in the Philippines we have the enviably apt euphemism for death: SUMAKABILANG BUHAY. Life on the other side! For me, that’s nothing to look down on. It’s on a par with the pseudo-scientific “Parallel Universe” over which all sorts’ intellectual wannabes chatter ecstatically, SUMAKABILANG BUHAY puts it nicely for us here in the Philippines and we should make no bones of that. As for columbaries qua columbaries, let me say a few words here. This now widely acceptable “RESING PLACE” for our loved ones, ashes don’t offend our formerly stringent sensibilities (cremation being once no practice for the Catholics then) – or at least, not fanatically so.
Well, reasons of exigency and sanitation or hygienic have to be considered level-headedly. Because of congestion in cemeteries, columbaries have become a necessarily procreative choice. If by cremation we seem to have accelerated the more flat-flouted behind the exordium: dust…to dust; ashes…to ashes. Now we can see these words and cremation to have lock stepped together at last. Besides, as pointed out above the thought of one’s departed rotting away whilst we are all actively busying ourselves with eating and drinking and jollification and what not these does seem to be a monstrous incongruence or disgusting parallel for those processes to be conjoined in day-to-day experience. It’s not a case of see-no-evil, smell-no-evil.
We read of Vlad Tepes the Christian scourge of the Turks in the 15th century dining implacably, surrounded by hundreds if Turks impaled around him, dying slowly, disgustingly we don’t have Vlad’s iron stomach. Do I seem gone off on tangent? I hope not. I’m only supersizing the comparison between the outmoded funeral practices and cremation and urn-ment therein, a few more words. The term columbarium originally meant a “dovecote” (counterpart, “belief”) and as such the descent of the dive (the Holy Spirit: Hope resonates with the notion of a columbary. A neat conjunction
