The Order of Christian Funerals is the work of the international Commission for English in the Liturgy, based on the Ordo Exsequiarum, the funeral rites revised after the Second Vatican Council. The Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy directed that the rites should express more clearly the paschal character of Christian death (SC 81). This Order offers us fuller rites adapted to Irish circumstances by the Irish Episcopal Commission for Liturgy and approved by the Irish Bishops' Conference.