text: The instruction  makes sense to me, perhaps because I am accustomed to visiting cemeteries,  where my mostly catholic family members are buried and my wife's Methodist family is buried. Ramsay Mac MacMullen (The Second Century: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400) describes the then burial practices of vast majority of Christians going to eat a sacred meal of food and wine in cemeteries, celebrating the memory of the departed. Today, one can avoid the big costs of funeral homes by working through the Funeral Consumers Alliance. a non-profit, mapping numbers of rather inexpensive options, e.g., cremation and return of the remains in a box or urn, which then allows people to have whatever services they desire. But none of all this has much to do the the dead. It is all about us, the still living and how we remember the dead, whether we hope for resurrection, or perhaps just want to somehow forget. Or, by keeping urns on the kitchen counter, pretend they are still somehow with us.