The Healing Journey

December 3, 2024

Jenine Berardesca, Family Advisor for Catholic Cemeteries, says her work is a ministry for people who have lost loved ones. She began the Tree of Remembrance celebration at St. Mary/Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, and several hundred people show up each year to place ornaments in memory of their deceased family members and friends on a 12-foot-tall spruce.

Jenine’s work goes beyond providing services and assistance to families who are grieving. It also involves her personal prayers.

“I realized very early in my career that while driving through the cemetery, monuments became reminders of the families I had come to know and care about,” she says. “I would ride past and found myself asking God to bless them or comfort them. My prayers were nothing elaborate, just short and sweet, heartfelt words to God. Simple prayers, which over the years have become part of my everyday prayer life.”

Several years ago, while attending the All Souls Mass at St Mary/Putnam, she realized how simple it would be to include prayers for souls in purgatory. “Now, I make sure that I do,” she says. “If I don’t have a specific name to pray for, I pray by cemetery section. I don’t have a long time to pray, but fortunately, I pass a lot of sections in my work.”

Her approach is simple. “When someone comes to your mind, consider it an invitation from the Holy Spirit to say a little prayer for them,” she says. “God will hear you. You don’t need a monument. Anything can be a reminder — a billboard, a song, a flower.”

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This year, the ceremony to light the Tree of Remembrance at St. Mary/Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich will take place on Thursday, December 5, from 5 to 7 p.m. All families in the community who have experienced the loss of a loved one are invited to the lighting.

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