By Fr. Robert Fromageot:
You are unique. Because we are all unique. We have unique fingerprints, unique DNA, etc. Notwithstanding all of this uniqueness and the diversity such uniqueness produces, as members of the human race, we have much in common with one another and with those who have gone before us. We all share the same rational nature and the end of that nature. We are all mortal. Death comes to us all. If the dead could speak, they would declare: “What you are, I was; what I am, you willl be.”
The Great Question?
No matter how diverse our backgrounds may be, death comes to us all. And yet, we all have the same desire: We all desire eternal, infinite happiness. We all want to live forever! Nevertheless, desire is one thing; attaining what we desire is another. After all, how can anyone live forever and enjoy infinite happiness if everyone is mortal? That is the great question, the great paradox which confronts us all. But not everyone knows the answer. Indeed, because the answer is not immediately knowable, many seek the answer in the pursuit of pleasure, popularity, possessions, or power. Nevertheless, all of these are finite goods.
Pleasure is fleeting, popularity fickle. And as for our possessions and power, when we die, we lose them too. They cannot fulfill our deepest desire. That is why Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, famously declares: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
But we Catholics have the answer.
We remind ourselves of the core of that answer with the image or sculpture of Christ Crucified, or what is called a crucifix. But what was Christ’s death on the cross. What was it? Why is it significant? Why is it the answer to the Great Question? Why does it contain the fulfilment of our desire for eternal happiness? To those those who don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God who has the words (and is the Word) of eternal life, that He is Our Savior, the solution and solver of that great Paradox, Christ’s death was simply an execution. But to those who do believe, it was much more than that: it was a sacrifice: Christ’s own, free sacrifice of obedience; of redemption. A sacrifice of self-giving love through which Christ conquered death, rising from the dead to die no more, and becoming for us the Way to eternal life. And what is that Way?
How do we get on that Way, that narrow path that leads to eternal life?
We get on that Way not only by believing in Christ, but by repenting of our sins, being baptized into His death so as to become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature. We walk along that Way that leads to eternal life by imitating Christ through the power of His Spirit, so as to carry our daily cross, living a life of self-giving love, presenting our bodies, in St. Paul’s words, “a living sacrifice — holy, pleasing unto God”.
But wait, there’s more. The crucifix is only a man-made reminder of what Christ did for us. But Christ Himself left us another way to call to mind and share in His Sacrifice. That other way is none other than the Holy Eucharist, the Bread of Life. We Catholics speak of the “holy sacrifice of the Mass” because the Holy Eucharist, which is Christ’s gift of Himself to the Church, is the sacramental, unbloody renewal of Christ’s physical, bloody sacrifice that He made of Himself once for all, some 2000 years ago.
In the Holy Eucharist, we who are alive in Christ are able to receive Him as our spiritual food, that we may be assimilated into His Body, so that our lives may be conformed to the Sacrifice which we consume; that we too may be obedient to God unto death; that we too may practice self-giving love. It should also be said that anyone who is not alive in Christ, who is dead in sin (whether he be baptized or not), or who is not in full communion with the visible Body of Christ, which is the Church, has no business pretending to be alive in Christ. Such pretence is called an “unworthy communion”. For St. Paul warns the Corinthians: “Whosoever shalll eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” and “eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord.”
But there is another very important reason why Our Lord has provided a way for us to renew and offer His own sacrifice to God. And that is atonement for sin. That is why, in the Canon of the Mass, the priest prays for the living and the dead. We Catholics pray not just for ourselves, but also for the faithful departed (those who have gone before us in Christ) because we recognize that, while a person may not have so abandoned Christ as to find himself among the goats, he may yet have followed Christ with at least some degree of self-centered love.
It is such love from which the faithful departed must be purified in order to enter eternal life, where only self-giving love is allowed. And so just as we have the privilege of being able to renew and be united to the Sacrifice of Christ, we also have the privilege of sharing in this process of purification and purgation by asking God to apply the merits of Christ’s sacrifice of perfect self-giving love which we ourselves offer here and now, to the faithful departed, so that he (or they) may be purified of all vestiges of selfish love and brought to the perfection self-giving love (or charity). But unlike a typical Mass, the Requiem Mass is directed much more forcefully towards the deceased.
It’s as though the Church desires the deceased to benefit from all the graces of the Mass, leaving nothing for the living. Thus, for example, the words of the Agnus Dei are changed. Instead of praying “miserere nobis” (have mercy on us), we pray, “dona eis requiem” (grant them peace). And at the end of Mass, the faithful do not receive the Final Blessing. It is omitted. Nevertheless, there are ways in which the Requiem Mass (especially in its extraordinary form) seeks to accompany those who are present: both believers and unbelievers; both faithful Catholics, and those who may have fallen away. There is, of course, the homily. The music proper to the Requiem of the Roman rite likewise has the power to touch the grieving faithful. For the the chant is restrained and soothing, yet not schmaltzy or sentimental. The ministers wear black vestments to validate and give liturgical expression to the grief of the mourners, as if to say to them: “the Church accompanies you in your sorrow.”
At last, and only in the usus antiquior, the great 13th century sequence called the Dies Irae helps to exercise the minds of the faithful on the things that really matter. If you study the Dies Irae, you will see that the first 6 verses describes for us the 2nd Coming of Christ, the Day of Judgment, when Christ will come to judge the living and the dead, tie up all the loose ends of history, and bring the great play of human history itself to completion. Verses 7 through 17 is an extended appeal to the “font of mercy”, that we may be among the saved, not the damned; that we be among the sheep who follow the Shepherd, and not among the goats who do their own thing and have no need of a shepherd. In short, the Dies Irae calls us to repentance and conversion, petitions the divine Mercy for to obtain the mercy and graces needed in light of that Day when we will all be called to account for how we have lived. Only with the final two verses does this magnificent poem redirect our attention towards the faithful departed, praying for them in the final verse: “Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest. Amen.”
In short, the Dies Irae directs our thoughts to the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. And it puts on our lips an eloquent appeal to the divine Mercy. So when the funeral of a loved one forces us to face the reality of our common mortality and the great paradox of our existence, the Dies Irae invites us to go beyond Death and confront the rest of the Four Last Things: Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. It invites us to embrace and follow Christ, the God-Man who has resolved the paradox with His own Death and Resurrection. For only in responding to this invitation will we be truly comforted in the face of our mortality.
So, then, here we are pondering the ultimate unavoidable certainties: All of us will die. We will all be judged by Christ. And we will either find ourselves among the damned or among the elect. And because many of us will die in the state of grace yet not without need of purification, we will be very grateful for whatever mercies of the Lord come our way through a priest’s offering of the Holy Sacrifce of the Mass on our behalf.
Let us, then, remember to earnestly and devoutly offer to almighty God “your sacrifice and mine” for ourselves and for those who have gone before us, that we may strive to know and love and serve the Lord, and that K.M. (together with all the faithful departed) may receive God’s purifying love, so that, once purified, he may enter into the company of the saints in heaven and enjoy everlasting rest. Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.