Arriving at the carpenter shop at Trappist Caskets one morning recently, I learned that Sargent Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps, died on January 22 and was buried in one of our Trappist Caskets. On the bulletin board was pinned a picture of the Shriver / Kennedy clan seated and listening to the eulogy behind a really simple rectangular walnut box. I recognized the casket, boldly patterned with white walnut streaks. It had been in our shop just days before. The photo was quite striking: the beautiful and poised Maria Shriver seated beside her husband, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, beside the rustic looking "poor man's" casket her father had chosen to be buried in. The monks' original plan for Trappist Caskets was to provide simple wooden caskets for poor people, religious and clergy. Religious and clergy responded enthusiastically to our product from the beginning and remain some of our most appreciative customers. We also get a fair amount of business from wealthy and successful business tycoons. Poor people are not big fans of our caskets. Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised but, as it turns out, poor people are often rather repulsed by the idea of burying a loved one in a casket that looks like a poor man's casket. It seems a decision to be buried like a poor man is a creative "alternative option" characteristic of strong-willed, self-possessed, rather well-to-do and successful people. Isn't life interesting. I don't judge any of these people. I can see where a poor family wants to say: "Our dad may have been poor, but he was moving up in the world", and confirm this by burying him in an expensive casket that looks like a Mercedes Benz. A rich man, for his part, may find distasteful the idea that his funeral would call people's attention to the loads of accumulated "stuff" he couldn't take with him. As I see it, a poor man seeking to be buried like a rich man, and a rich man seeking to be buried like a poor man, are going to cross paths at some point and meet. They will meet and recognize one another at precisely the point where they see in the other a human being endowed by God with an innate dignity. This dignity was confirmed by the God-man Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead and ascended bodily to heaven. In life, the rich and the poor risk being an object of contempt for each other. Approaching death, we are all brought before the mystery of Christ's resurrection and the revelation of God's dream for us — that we should be reconciled to one another, that we should live forever, and that our whole existence be nothing but one ceaseless song of praise and thanksgiving to God.

Father Raphael