Lately to my Masses I’ve been adding 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”.
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/her soul which You created; so that, in the hour of his/her passing, he/she 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 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, and the sick near to death, as well as for the grace of dying well is a real gift from the Church.
I recently rediscovered a slim volume entitled The Osterley Selection from the Latin Fathers, published in 1950. The preface praises the great classical authors—Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Virgil—yet insists that Christian also worthy. The collection includes brief selections from Fathers of the Church. It occurred to me that I might offer a podcast of the readings with an English translation, comments and the Latin original.
