The Service of Thanksgiving and Remembrance for Matthew Shepard at Washington National Cathedral will be webcast on the cathedral’s website on Friday, October 26. It is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. EDT, but webcasts of the cathedral’s services often begin earlier in order to include musical preludes. The service in the cathedral is open to the public, all are invited. Following the service, Shepard’s ashes will be interred in the cathedral’s crypt in a private service.

The cathedral typically publishes the order of its services on its website on the day of the service. Conspirare, an internationally recognized choir based in Austin, Texas, has announced that they will perform selections from Considering Matthew Shepard during the service. They will also perform a 45-minute program in the nave at the end of the service while the private interment takes place in the crypt. The public is invited to remain in the nave in reflection and prayer during this time.

As I explained in an earlier post, Shepard’s remains will join those of over 200 others in the cathedral, but his will be the first of a national figure not closely connected to the cathedral’s life in fifty years.

The service will be led by the bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde and the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, former bishop of New Hampshire and the first openly gay man elected a bishop of The Episcopal Church.

While the twenty-year delay between Shepard’s death on October 12, 1998, and the placement of his remains in the cathedral is unusual, it is not unprecedented. Eighty-two years transpired between the death of the Right Reverend Thomas J. Claggett in 1816 and their interment on the newly purchased cathedral grounds in 1898. Claggett was the first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. The Diocese of Washington was partitioned from the Maryland diocese in 1895. Admiral George Dewey’s body was also moved to the cathedral from Arlington National Cemetery nine years after his 1917 death.

In the early years of the cathedral’s life, only full-body burials were considered and the cathedral was limited by law to four burials per year. At this time, interment at the cathedral was a closely guarded honor. Presently, the cathedral publicizes two interment locations, the columbarium in its crypt, and the memorial garden in the garth on the cathedral’s north side. While applications for interment still must be approved by the cathedral’s dean and chapter, this suggests a more open approach.