Sad news about a long-time reader and a WDTPRS look at the Collect of the Mass “for the sick near to death”

I received sad news.  A long time reader and commentator here, even longer from my time with The Wanderer, passed away last night.  In your kindness please pray for Charles Henry Edwards.

Henry was a key figure in fostering celebration of Holy Mass in the Vetus Ordo in Knoxville.  He would send out a newsletter to his community quoting my WDTPRS translations, of which he was a great fan.  He and his wife came to visit me once and we had a very pleasant time.  Henry donated a computer which I maintain, though it is outdated, because it has a precious database on it which I run with a virtual machine.  Henry was very kind and a gracious benefactor.

Yesterday, I receive the news from his daughter that Henry was in hospice care in his last hours.  Her mother had asked her to start cancelling Henry’s subscriptions, and so forth, which is how she happened to write.

When I had the news from Henry’s daughter, I changed my intention for the daily live-streamed Mass I was about to celebrate – Henry was on the list – and offered it for him.  I’ll say a Requiem for him tomorrow.

Yesterday, I added the orations from the Votive Mass “pro infirmo proximo morti… for a sick person close to death”.

The prayers are staggeringly beautiful.     Like to them are the prayers from the Votive “ad postulandam gratiam bene moriendi… to beg for the grace of dying well”.

Henry would have wanted me to have a look at the

COLLECT:

Omnipotens et misericors Deus, qui humano generi et salutis remedia, et vitae aeternae munera contulisti: respice propitius famulum tuum infirmitate corpore laborantem, et animam refove, quam creasti; ut, in hora exitus illius, absque peccati macula tibi, Creatori suo per manus sanctorum Angelorum repraesentari mereantur.

This is pretty straight forward.  You see the et… et… construction.  Refoveo is “to warm, cherish again, revive”.

Almighty and merciful God, who conferred upon the human race both the remedies of salvation and the gifts of eternal life: propitiously regard your servant suffering from bodily infirmity and restore his souls which You created; so that, in the hour of his passing, he will merit to be brought by the hands of Holy Angels before his Creator without the stain of sin.

Note that even as the body is giving out, the soul is to be stirred up, warmed up, as the breath of the Holy Spirit can revive and quicken an ember or coal into greater heat and light.

What is gift is baptism and all the sacraments.  Sine quibus non.

In a sense, we are all of us – right now – sick and near to death.

Death could come at any moment to any one of us, sick or in the peak of life.  In the great Litany of Saints the most important petition, in my opinion, is when we ask God to preserve us from a “sudden and unprovided death”, that is, without access to the last sacraments and Apostolic Pardon.  This is a constant concern of mine, since I live alone.  This is why I urge you to

GO TO CONFESSION!

We are going to die some day and go before the Just Judge to render an account.    This is why I sometimes say that the way that Mass is celebrated should help us all get ready for death.

Put bluntly, we go to Mass because we are going to die.

That doesn’t mean moping around or being lugubrious.  It does, however, suggest a certain gravitas, decorum, the need for prayers that reflect the reality of our spiritual condition along with expressions of the Four Last Things.  Not only prayers, but also architecture… music… vestments… style of movement and gesture… everything.  

If Mass does not have those elements which help your self-reflection and preparation for death… then… something important is missing.

Having Votive Masses explicitly for the sick as well as for the grace of dying well is a real gift from the Church.

It is good to drill into the orations, so carefully chosen by the Church over the centuries.  Henry liked to do that.