There is great interest among the faithful in dignified prayer for the dead.
A reader sends this:
Fr. Dwight Longenecker and Fr. Jay Scott Newman sat in choir as Msgr. Steven Brovey, V.F, pastor of Prince of Peace parish, and head of liturgy for the diocese of Charleston, offered the Traditional Latin Mass on Monday, Nov. 2, the Feast of All Souls, at Prince of Peace in Taylors, SC.
The combined choirs of St. Mary’s (Greenville, SC) and Prince of Peace sang a Faure Requiem.
More than 800 attended from around the Upstate of South Carolina.
Planting seeds…
Brick by brick.
This rather gives the lie to the banal "celebrations of people’s lives" perpetrated in the place of real funerals or requiem Masses.
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I have vowed to haunt anyone who refers to my funeral as a “Celebration of Life”. It’s a celebration of Jesus Christ’s life.
I also, in writing no less, have instructed that in any gathering after my traditional sung Requiem Mass and burial, NO ONE is to proclaim, “I know Mom’s in heaven.” There will be Catholic family members, fallen aways, non-Catholic friends (if I have any left, since I’ll probably be 99) in attendance. The short essay I have asked to have read at such a gathering explains Purgatory to all and sundry with a request that prayers be said for the repose of my soul. So there!
This is amazing. Knowing the history between the priests involved here it is great to see this happen in the Upstate. I traveled an hour each way when I was in the upstate to attend the EF at Prince of Peace when it was offered or to St. Mary’s for the OF. Two of the best priests in the diocese by far.
Glad to hear it. In the parish where I work I live in real confusion on this question. On the one hand, people don’t want funerals but ‘celebrations of life.’ On the other hand, there is an unmanageable demand for Mass intentions for deceased persons. Even with our regular seventeen Masses a week, we cannot hope to satisfy the demand, and I routinely have to ask people to leave the parish office because of their nastiness on the issue. So do they want to pray for the eternal rest of the dead or not? Perhaps the Masses for the dead aren’t really for them, but for our need to memorialize.
We need to make more room for emotional wakes full of personal reminiscences and music loved by the deceased and so forth, so that people won’t feel like doing all that stuff at the funeral Mass.
Honestly, I think the solemnity maintained by funeral homes has done a lot to kill wakes. Half of them try to hold huge funeral prayer services before the Mass can even be said! Maybe parishes should open their halls for after-burial gatherings that are a little less solemn?
As for the allergy to black vestments, maybe we need glaringly silver vestments with tasteful hints of black. Every year, you could make things a little blacker. :)