Starting with the Kennedy assassination, TV commentator Ari Melber looked at national tragedies. Past national tragedies were usually specific acts that immediately plunged the nation into grief. The pandemic is different. Deaths continue to rise beyond our comprehension. This tragedy goes on month-by-month. We’re all coping with day-to-day issues of living in lockdown. We are not having time to grieve. To be healed on the other side, we need to take time now to grieve. Some prayers from the liturgy for a funeral service.
Give to the families who mourn comfort in their grief and a sure confidence in Your loving care that, casting all their sorrow on You, they may know the consolation of Your love. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.
Give courage and faith to the bereaved, that within the communion of Your Church they may have strength to meet the days ahead in the assurance of a holy and certain hope and in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those they love who have departed in the faith. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.
Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand, to believe and find comfort in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.
Draw near to us in our deepest sorrow and comfort us in these tragic deaths with the protection of the cross and resurrection. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.
O God of all grace, You sent Your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to bring life and immortality to light. We give You thanks that by His death He destroyed the power of death and by His resurrection He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Strengthen us in the confidence that because He lives we shall live also, and that neither death nor life nor things present nor things to come will be able to separate us from Your love, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
(taken, with some adaptations, from the Lutheran Service Book)
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