Marking the end of a person’s life on earth
Funeral at the Malaga Chaplaincy
A funeral provides the opportunity for family and friends to come together to support one another in their grief, to pay their respects to someone that each of them has in their own way known, appreciated and loved, to give thanks for a life which has ended and to commend them into God’s keeping.
Funerals in Spain normally take place within 24 hours of death. For that reason, families often prefer to hold a memorial or thanksgiving service some weeks or even months after a person has died to allow time to gather and remember.
Preparing for a Funeral
If someone you know and love has died, a funeral led by a Church of England priest can be held here in church, by a graveside, or at a crematorium. The clergy will be there to support you every step of the way.
Once we have been contacted by the Funeral Director we will meet understand something of the life of the deceased.
There is considerable flexibility in the form of service, from a full Anglican liturgy to something more tailored to the wishes of the family. We will invite you to share your thoughts, and ideas, and together we will be create something which is personal and appropriate to the person who has died.
Further information is available from the Church of England website here.
The Funeral Service
It is natural and right that your first emotion will be that of sadness – the direct and very real grief of family and friends at the loss of someone who has been held dear, for whom your memories are all too real.
But we come together because there is something more that we need to do, something more than grief and memories. We come together to give thanks for their life, and to commend the person who has died to God. As his friends and family here on earth, we give him/her back to God, to the God who created and sustained them, and now receives them.
And amidst our sadness today, we give thanks too for a new life, where the person who died can be fully who God intends him to be – free of limitation, fully human and fully with God.
Next steps
Your first contact will normally be with the Funeral Director who will put you in touch with our Chaplain, Father Louis in Malaga or Mother Doreen in Salinas.
If at any time, before or after an funeral or memorial service, you would like to speak with one of the clergy, contact Fr Hilary here, and he will set up the meeting for you.