Last aunt dies

My last aunt died last Sunday and we attend her funeral in our home village tomorrow. My wife and I now have no living relatives of our parents' generation. We are now the generation heading up the living part of our family tree which is a sobering thought. However this is only the trigger for this blog subject matter. Almost at the last moment it is announced that the aunt's funeral service will commence 15 minutes earlier than previously planned to allow time for it to take the form of a requiem mass at the suggestion of the officiating priest, entirely appropriate for a Christian lady and during Eastertide.

Requiem

The Requiem (from the Latin requiés, rest) or Requiem Mass, also known formally (in Latin) as the Missa pro defunctis or Missa defunctorum, is a liturgical service of the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Anglican "High" Church and certain Lutheran Churches in the United States. There is also a requiem, with a wholly different ritual form and texts, that is observed in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. The common theme of requiems is prayer for the salvation of the soul(s) of the departed, and it is used both at services immediately preceding a burial, and on occasions of more general remembrance.

The Roman Catholic Liturgy

This use of the word requiem comes from the opening words of the Introit: Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. (Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.) The requiem Mass differs from the ordinary Mass in omitting certain joyful passages such as the Gloria, Credo, and Alleluia, and by the addition of the sequence Dies Iræ.

Anglican burial service

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer contains seven texts which are collectively known as "funeral sentences". The text of these seven sentences, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, is:

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shalt stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.

I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit: for they rest from their labours.

Prayer for the dead

Wherever there is a belief in the continued existence of man's personality through and after death, religion naturally concerns itself with the relations between the living and the dead. And where the idea of a future judgment or of purgatory obtains, prayers are often offered on behalf of the dead to the Higher Powers.

Prayer for the dead is well-documented within the early Christian church, both among prominent church fathers and the Christian community in general.

The Protestant Reformation in part began as a protest against the sale of Indulgences; and by extension the Protestants, in rejecting the Roman doctrine of Purgatory, were inclined to abandon all prayers for the dead.

In the Communion Service in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, after praise and thanks were offered for all the saints, chiefly the Blessed Virgin, came the following: We commend into thy mercy all other thy servants, which are departed hence from us with the sign of faith and now do rest in the sleep of peace: grant unto them, we beseech thee, thy mercy and everlasting peace.

The Burial Service of the same date contained explicit prayers for the deceased, and introit, collect, epistle and gospel were provided for the Celebration of the Holy Communion when there is a Burial of the Dead. In 1552, under the influence of Bucer, all mention of the dead, whether commemorative or intercessory, was cut out of the Eucharist; the prayers in the Burial Service were brought into their present form; and the provision for Holy Communion at a Burial was omitted. The thankful commemoration of the dead in the Eucharist was restored in 1661, but prayers for them remained, if they remained at all, veiled in ambiguous phrases.

The Church of England has never forbidden prayers for the dead, however little she has used them in her public services. It was proposed in 1552 to condemn the scholastic doctrine De precatione pro defunctis in what is now the 22nd of the Thirty-Nine Articles, but the proposal was rejected. And these intercessions have been used in private by a long list of English divines, among whom Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (c. 1600), Cosin, Thomas Ken, Charles Wesley and John Keble form an almost complete chain down to the present day. On the tomb of Bishop Barrow (1680) stands a request to passers-by to pray for their fellow-servant. And in a suit (1838) as to the lawfulness of an inscription, Pray for the soul of . . ., the court decided that no authority or canon has been pointed out by which the practice of praying for the dead has been expressly prohibited. As Jeremy Taylor put it (Dissuasive from Popery, I. I. iv.), "General prayers for the dead the Church of England never did condemn by any express articles, but left it in the middle".

Personal View

Death does not separate. It permanently unites. Love persists. Prayer is an expression of love.
Offered "through Jesus Christ, our Lord" it is simple and sound.

"May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace and rise in glory"

"Rest eternal grant unto them O Lord and let light perpetual shine upon them"

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death"