Friday, November 02, 2007

Holy Souls: Let us not presume


I love All Souls Day, I celebrated an early Mass, in Latin, ad orientem, wearing a rather splendid black chasuble, with unbleached candles. My the second Mass ad populum was the man Mass really, there were about 50 or 60 people there, tonight there is an hours Exposition of the Blessed, followed by our normal, weekly ad orientem Mass, I am always surprised at how many young people come, I would like to celebrate more Masses facing the same direction as the people.
Younger people seem to like the prayerfulness of it.

All Souls Day, apart from Christmas day, is the only time priests "may" celebrate three Masses. I am going a little later to the end of the road to the ancient pre-reformation cemetry of Brighton to gain the Indulgence for the faithful departed.
The reason that I do like this day, is that I have got to that stage in life where I know more people who are dead than alive! Like all feast days or days of commemoration the Church draws out a strand of Christain faith and asks to penetrate its mystery. At Eastertide we certainly commemorate the faithful departed but today we do it differentl, we are confronted with the sorrow of death, the stark reality of skulls and bones, of the debt of sin, and even of doubt that we might not actually be ready for heaven.
Holy Souls day reminds us that there is Judgement, that Salvation actually depends on God Himself, that we will one day be dependant on the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, when we join the Church Suffering. I like the idea that the Church mourns for the death of my mother and my friends, as Jesus wept for his dead friend Lazarus.

4 comments:

Dr. Peter H. Wright said...

Thank you, Father.
This is a quite lovely post.

And many thanks for the the photo of the funeral (or it his lying in state ? )of Pope Pius X in the Sistine Chapel, mercifully in the days before the "restorers" scrubbed all the frescos, removing, as far as I could see, much of Michelangelo's chiaroscuro.

Oh well, it was originally applied "a secco", so it is technically possible, I suppose, to restore it sometime.

I wish I lived in your parish !

Black vestments and unbleached candles.

Celebration ad orientem.

Well, that , in my opinion, is the way it should be.

I suppose All Souls Day is, in a sense, a celebration of the Holy Souls who have been saved, but who are not yet numbered among the saints.

I am glad it survives in the new calendar as a day specially devoted to remembrance of, and prayer for, the dead.

It need not be seen as a "memento mori".

But it's good to know the Church Militant remembers the Church Suffering.

Anagnostis said...

Thank you Father. As I get older,this becomes one of my own favourite days of the year, too. I love the Mass particularly, and the Gregorian setting is the perhaps the most inspired and beautiful of all.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine;
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Gregor Kollmorgen said...

Is it common in English to speak of "Holy Souls"? After all, isn't it the point of the commemoration that they do not yet enjoy the visio beatifica? I am not aware of another language that uses that term to refer to the "Commemoratio Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum".

Dr. Peter H. Wright said...

The answer to the question from Berolinensis is "Yes."

It is common usage in England to speak of the souls in Purgatory as the Holy Souls.

There is a useful meditation on the Holy Souls by Fr. Armand de Malleray, FSSP., posted by the Latin Mass Society at :
www.latin-mass-society.org/monthofholysouls.html

(Sorry.
Don't know how to create a link.)

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