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Gravediggers Guild

A tradition at the Chapel is for parishioners to dig the graves for persons buried in the Chapel cemetery. The graves are dug meticulously and lovingly by hand by men and women alike. 

We are also looking for people to help out with the Gravediggers Guild Auxiliary.  This group is responsible for providing refreshments and support to the Gravediggers Guild. You cannot dig a grave in Mississippi in July without them.

Another tradition for Chapel funerals is the Prayer Vigil.  Individuals come to the Chapel in at least one-hour increments throughout the night to sit with the body and pray.  What a sweet and personal service they provide. We have a number of faithful Vigil participants but could use more. If this sounds like a ministry you would like to get involved with, please call the Chapel office.

The Hospitality Committee provides coffee and refreshments during visitation times for funerals and often lunch following a funeral service.  Let us know if you would like to help.

We are in the process of updating our Gravediggers Guild and Auxiliary lists and we are taking this time-honored tradition into cyberspace.  Please email or call the Chapel office to sign up.  Give us your home and work email address, as well as telephone numbers where you can be reached.  We will try using email in the future to contact people as quickly as possible.

Gravedigging is just one of the counter-culture traditions associated with Chapel funerals. The following article on these traditions written by Barbara McDonald has appeared in state and national publications.

Time-honored traditions bring comfort

"People often would rather feel guilty than helpless," Elaine Pagels observes in Adam, Eve and the Serpent.

This observation rings truer at funerals perhaps more than any other time, particularly when death is due to incurable illness and there is nowhere to lay the blame.

Parishioners at Chapel of the Cross have found a way to overcome this feeling of helplessness by engaging in time-honored traditions that not only serve as a real help and comfort to the family of the deceased, but also help the parishioners deal with their own grieving for the loss of their friend. The simple tasks of digging the grave by hand, maintaining an all-night vigil with the body in the Chapel, arranging altar flowers, helping visitors feel comfortable with the Episcopal tradition of the funeral Eucharist, and preparing lunch for all who attend the funeral have become powerful expressions of love and healing, almost sacramental in nature.

The Chapel of the Cross lost two dear parishioners within four days of each other one fall - Marjorie Fanning and Jim Majure. The meaning of life and its fragileness, friendship, and sense of community grew immeasurably as Chapel priests, staff and parishioners took over tasks normally handled by funeral directors and florists from receiving the body in the Chapel on the eve of the funeral to placing the final clod of dirt on the grave. Many parishioners took off more than one day of work to help attend to the many details for the two funerals.

The Gravediggers Guild toiled from 2:00 one Friday afternoon until long after dark when flashlights and headlights were needed to complete Marjorie's grave. More than 20 men of all ages and shapes took turns shoveling through the rock-hard soil in the new section of the Chapel's historic cemetery, not far from the grave of The Rt. Rev. Hugh Miller Thompson, second Bishop of Mississippi.

Barely having time to get over their stiffness from this unaccustomed exercise, on Monday afternoon they began again, digging the grave for him just a few feet from Marjorie's. In an effort to break through the numbness of their shock at the death of a friend their own age, surgeons, lawyers, architects, engineers and businessmen sweated through their grief as they dug. They carefully measured the hole, shaving a little dirt off here and there to make sure it would be perfect. Non-Episcopalian neighbors of Jim also found solace as they joined Chapel members in digging, a task you normally couldn't get paid enough to take on but one you do gladly for a beloved friend.

For Chapel Rector John Sewell, no more powerful moment touched his life than when he placed the communion wafer next to fresh blisters in the palms of these men's hands at the funeral Eucharist.

Those unable to provide this strenuous labor found many other ways to overcome helplessness. Parishioners volunteered to get out of bed in the middle of the night to come to the Chapel for a two-hour shift during each vigil which lasted from the close of the prayer service at 8:00 p.m. on the eve of the funeral until the service began the next morning.

The visitation the night before the funeral was held in the Chapel, not a sterile funeral parlor. A kneeler was placed before the casket where prayers and good-byes could be offered. A simple pall covered the casket, and tasteful flowers lovingly arranged by the Flower Guild graced the altar so that the mourners' attention was on the worship service, not diverted to counting how many sprays of flowers had been sent.

For each service, a Scottish bagpiper, dressed in tartan kilt, led the procession in the Chapel for the Rite II Funeral Eucharist. Mourners felt the power of the service perhaps most forcefully when they walked past the casket which filled most of the aisle to partake of Communion. At the conclusion of the Eucharist, the bagpiper led the procession to the cemetery. When the graveside prayers were finished, he played "Amazing Grace" as he slowly walked off into the adjacent field. No one moved from the gravesite until the fading strains of the hymn could no longer be heard - a moving time for each to silently make final prayers and farewells.

Perhaps no one felt the healing aspect of the Chapel's traditions as did the Fanning family. Verger Tom Fanning found solace as he prepared the service booklet for Jim's funeral, just two days after he had buried his mother. Bill Fanning found release in helping dig Jim's grave just two days after laying his wife to rest.

Marjorie and Jim were quite different in life and in death - Marjorie succumbed to a long and debilitating illness; Jim was suddenly stricken by a heart attack. Marjorie was a beloved wife, mother, grandmother and businesswoman. Jim was a dedicated husband, father, songwriter and noted author at the peak of his literary career, his life cut short in the middle of writing the movie screenplay for his first novel. Marjorie was laid to rest on a glorious sunshine-filled Saturday, Jim on a bone-chilling rainy Tuesday. Many stood shivering the cold rain to watch until the last bit of dirt was replaced on Jim's grave by Chapel members, just as they had stood by three days earlier for Marjorie's.

But the funeral service itself, a Eucharist celebrating the life of the deceased and the hope of the everlasting, was the same for each and a true comfort to all. The overflow crowd for Jim's funeral who watched the service via closed circuit television in the parish hall felt the same power of the service as those in the Chapel as they all participated in the prayers and hymns and partook of communion. At each of the funerals, parishioners helped non-Episcopalians with the unfamiliar service and to feel comfortable joining in the communion feast.

For the luncheon after each service, food appeared out of nowhere to feed the multitudes in the parish hall where the best china and silver were laid out.

Most importantly of all, the love, concern, sense of community and just wanting to do something to help was the same at both funerals. When the great equalizer - death - comes, Chapel traditions ensure that all are given the same loving tribute and send-off to life everlasting. And we have found that these traditions, perhaps more than any others, have been a shining light to non-Episcopalians to impart the great sense of community and love that our style of worship brings.

"People are often amazed at our traditions, particularly digging the grave by hand. I earnestly believe that in this hectic-paced world where there's never enough of anything - especially time - we need to return to counterculture traditions to bring us back to the reality of our mortality and the importance of caring for our fellow human beings as family," Rev. Sewell explained.