When a death occurs, contact the Church office at 405-722-2110. A pastoral associate will then be in touch with you to plan the funeral services. You will have an opportunity to meet with a pastoral associate, a priest, and a deacon, to plan the services. The most common form of funeral service is a Vigil service, often done at the funeral home, although it can be done at the Church, followed the next day by the Mass of Christian Burial at the Church. At the request of the family, the Bereavement Ministry will prepare and serve a lunch following the service and burial, or immediately after the service if the burial is in another City.

We can do the full funeral rite with the cremated remains of the deceased present.

We know this is a difficult time for the family, and we want you to know that the parish is here to accompany you during your journey of grief.

After the funeral services, we have an ongoing Grief Support Group and an annual Remembrance Service around the Feast of All Souls in November. Our pastoral staff is available for counseling.

Preplanning of Funeral Services
Our staff can meet with families to pre-plan funeral services. We have an Epiphany Funeral Planning Document that can be used for that process. You can print it and fill it out on your own, or you can meet with us and we can go over it with you. We invite you to provide us with a copy so we can keep it on file. Keep the other in a place where it can be found, and make sure that whoever will be responsible for planning your funeral either has a copy or knows where it is.

From the Order of Christian Funerals. . .
In the face of death, the Church confidently proclaims that God has created each person for eternal life and that Jesus, the Son of God, by his death and resurrection, has broken the chains of sin and death that bound humanity.

At the death of a Christian, whose life of faith was begun in the waters of baptism and strengthened at the Eucharistic table, the Church intercedes on behalf of the deceased because of its confident belief that death is not the end nor does it break the bonds forged in life.

The Church… commends the dead to God’s merciful love and pleads for the forgiveness of their sins. At the funeral rites…the Christian community affirms and expresses the union of the Church on earth with the Church in heaven in the one great communion of saints. Though separated from the living, the dead are still at one with the community of believers on earth and benefit from their prayers and intercession. The celebration of the Christian funeral brings hope and consolation to the living.

While proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and witnessing Christian hope in the resurrection, the funeral rites also recall God’s mercy to all who take part in them.

When a member of Christ’s Body dies, the faithful are called to a ministry of consolation to those who have suffered the loss of one whom they love. Christian consolation is rooted in the hope that comes from faith in the saving death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christian hope faces the reality of death and the anguish of grief but trusts confidently that the power of sin and death has been vanquished by the risen Lord. The Church calls each member of Christ’s Body to participate in the ministry of consolation: to care for the dying, to pray for the dead, and to comfort those who mourn.