A reflection for Monday, 2 November: In Commemoratione Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum, ad primam Missam, I classis
Yesterday the vestments were white and the Church sang Gaudeamus. Today they are black, and the Introit is the oldest prayer the Church has for her dead: Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. “Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.” Its words come from the fourth book of Esdras, where the prophet promises the people that the Shepherd will give them rest for ever, because everlasting light will shine on them. Its verse is from the sixty-fourth Psalm: Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion… ad te omnis caro veniet. “A hymn, O God, becometh thee in Sion… to thee all flesh shall come.”
All flesh shall come to thee. That line holds the whole day. Every one of us will make that journey, and most of us will not arrive in heaven straight away. The saints we honoured yesterday are the members of Christ’s Body who have reached home. The souls we pray for today are members of the same Body still on the road, sure of their salvation but not yet clean enough to see God. They can no longer merit for themselves. We can still help them. So the Church, who yesterday asked the saints to pray for us, today asks us to pray for those who cannot pray for themselves.
The Mass is stripped of every sign of festivity. There is no Gloria, no Alleluia, no Credo. The priest does not bless himself at the Introit, and he does not bless the people at the end. The deacon does not say Ite, missa est but Requiescant in pace. Every blessing of the day is turned away from the living and given to the dead. Since 1915 every priest may offer three Masses today, and this is the first of them. Its readings answer the question every grave puts to us: what becomes of the dead?
I. Absorpta est mors: the Epistle
“Brethren: Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption; and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:51-57)
A mystery. Ecce mysterium vobis dico. St. Paul has spent the whole chapter proving that Christ is risen and that we shall rise with Him. Now he comes to something no argument could reach, and he calls it a mystery: a truth known only because God has revealed it. The Latin reads omnes quidem resurgemus, sed non omnes immutabimur, “we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed.” The Greek manuscripts known to the Fathers read differently: “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” St. Jerome, asked about the difference, wrote a long letter weighing both readings. He concluded that both teach the same faith. All men will rise, the good and the wicked alike. But only the just will be changed, transformed into glory. The wicked will rise too, but they will rise into shame (Epistula 119, ad Minervium et Alexandrum). The Vulgate reading puts the warning of the Gospel inside the Epistle. Rising is certain for everyone. Glory is not.
In the twinkling of an eye. In momento, in ictu oculi, in novissima tuba. The resurrection will not be slow. Death takes a body apart over years. God will put it together in an instant. The Church has made this trumpet the centre of the Sequence of this Mass: Tuba mirum spargens sonum / per sepulchra regionum / coget omnes ante thronum. “The trumpet, scattering its wondrous sound through the tombs of every land, shall drive all men before the throne.” The Dies iræ is often called a gloomy poem. It is really a meditation on this verse of St. Paul and on the Gospel that follows, set to music.
This corruptible. Oportet enim corruptibile hoc induere incorruptionem. The Fathers noticed the small word hoc, “this.” St. Paul does not say that some other, finer body will replace ours. He says this corruptible thing, this mortal thing, will be clothed with immortality. Tertullian argued the point against those who denied that the flesh would rise: the Apostle all but lays his hand on his own body as he speaks (De resurrectione carnis 50-51). St. Irenaeus made the same argument from the same verses. The mortal that puts on immortality can only be the flesh, since the soul is not mortal; and death cannot be “swallowed up” unless the very thing it had swallowed is given back (Adversus haereses V.13.3). This is why the Church buries her dead with reverence, blesses their graves, and incenses their bodies at the Requiem. The body in the coffin is not a husk. It is waiting.
Death is swallowed up. Absorpta est mors in victoria. St. Paul joins two prophets. Isaias promised that the Lord would cast death down headlong for ever (Isa. 25:8). Osee heard God say, Ero mors tua, o mors, “O death, I will be thy death” (Osee 13:14). The image is of death as a devourer that is itself devoured. It opened its mouth to swallow Christ, and it was swallowed by Him. The Church sings the same triumph in her Paschal homily attributed to St. John Chrysostom, which takes up this very cry: Where is thy sting?
The sting of death is sin. Stimulus autem mortis peccatum est. Here the reading turns from the end of the world to the cause of our trouble. Death has a sting, and the sting is sin. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage, compares death to a creature whose sting has been drawn. It still comes, but it cannot kill the soul that is in grace, just as an insect without its sting can buzz but cannot wound (Hom. in I Cor. 42). St. Augustine explains the harder phrase that follows, virtus vero peccati lex, “the power of sin is the law.” The law is holy. But the law alone, without grace, shows a man what is forbidden without giving him the strength to refuse it. The sinner then sins with knowledge, and his guilt grows. Only grace, which the law could not give, breaks this chain (De civitate Dei XIII.5).
This is the key to All Souls. The souls in Purgatory have already been freed from the sting. They died in grace. Their sins are forgiven, and they cannot be lost. But they carry the remains of sin: debts of temporal punishment not yet paid, and attachments not yet burned away. They suffer, not because death still has its sting in them, but because the sting has left its mark. The fire of Purgatory is the healing of that wound.
Thanks be to God. Deo autem gratias, qui dedit nobis victoriam. The Epistle ends in thanksgiving, which in Greek is eucharistia. The victory over death is a gift, dedit, given through Our Lord Jesus Christ. And it is given above all at the altar, in the Sacrifice that makes present the death by which death was destroyed. St. John Chrysostom, in the homily before his sermon on these verses, tells his people not to weep uselessly for their dead but to help them with prayer, almsgiving and the offering of the Sacrifice. It was not idly, he says, that the Apostles laid down that the departed be remembered in the awesome mysteries. They knew that great gain and benefit come to them from it (Hom. in I Cor. 41).
II. Audient vocem: the Gospel
“At that time: Jesus said to the multitudes of the Jews: Amen, amen I say unto you, that the hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son also to have life in himself: And he hath given him power to do judgment, because he is the Son of man. Wonder not at this; for the hour cometh, wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that have done good things, shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:25-29)
The hour cometh, and now is. Our Lord speaks of the dead hearing His voice twice, and the two sayings are not the same. The first time He says venit hora, et nunc est, “the hour cometh, and now is.” The second time He says only venit hora, “the hour cometh.” St. Augustine saw that the difference is deliberate. The first hour is already here. It is the hour in which souls dead in sin hear the Gospel, believe, and live. This is the first resurrection, the resurrection of the soul, which takes place in this life through faith and Baptism. The second hour has not yet come. In it, not souls but all that are in the graves will hear, and the bodies will rise. This is the second resurrection, which will take place at the end of the world (Tractatus in Ioannem 19; De civitate Dei XX.6).
The order matters. Only those who have risen the first time will rise to life the second time. Augustine draws the lesson plainly: rise now in the soul, if you do not want to rise later only to be condemned. This is exactly the warning St. Paul gave in the Vulgate’s non omnes immutabimur. Every grave will open. Not every grave will open onto glory.
Life in himself. Sicut enim Pater habet vitam in semetipso, sic dedit et Filio habere vitam in semetipso. We have life as a gift we receive and can lose. The Son has life in Himself, as the Father does. Augustine is careful here. The Father does not give the Son life as one gives a lamp to a man who had none. He begets the Son as Life itself, equal to Himself (Tractatus in Ioannem 19). This is why the voice of the Son can raise the dead. A voice that merely has life cannot give it. A voice that is Life can call it back into dust.
Because he is the Son of man. Et potestatem dedit ei iudicium facere, quia Filius hominis est. Why is judgment given to the Son as man? Augustine answers that at the judgment both the good and the wicked must see the Judge. The wicked cannot see God in His divinity, for only the clean of heart shall see God. So the Son will judge in the form of the humanity He took from the Virgin, the form in which He was judged by men. The just will see Him as their Saviour, and the wicked will see Him whom they pierced (Tractatus in Ioannem 19; De Trinitate I.13). There is a mercy hidden even in this. The One who will judge us has a human heart. He has stood where we stand. He knows what we are made of, and He has worn our flesh in death.
The resurrection of life, the resurrection of judgment. The Gospel ends with two doors. Qui bona fecerunt, in resurrectionem vitæ: qui vero mala egerunt, in resurrectionem iudicii. “They that have done good things,” not merely they that believed. Faith is the beginning of the first resurrection; it must bear fruit in deeds. The souls in Purgatory have already passed through the particular judgment, and they belong to the first group. Their place at the resurrection of life is secure. But they are not yet ready to enter it. The Tract of this Mass prays for exactly what they need: Absolve, Domine, animas omnium fidelium defunctorum ab omni vinculo delictorum, “Absolve, O Lord, the souls of all the faithful departed from every bond of their sins,” so that, with Thy grace helping them, mereantur evadere iudicium ultionis, they may deserve to escape the judgment of vengeance, et lucis æternæ beatitudine perfrui, and enjoy the blessedness of eternal light.
III. The commemoration: from Cluny to the whole Church
The Church has prayed for her dead from the beginning. The Second Book of Machabees, read in the second Mass of today, praises Judas for having sacrifice offered for the slain, “that they might be loosed from sins” (2 Mach. 12:46). Tertullian, around the year 200, speaks of oblations made for the dead on the anniversary of their death as a custom handed down by tradition (De corona 3). St. Cyril of Jerusalem teaches his newly baptised that at the Sacrifice the Church prays for all who have fallen asleep before us, believing that it is the greatest help to their souls (Catecheses mystagogicæ 5.9). St. Augustine records his mother’s last wish as she lay dying at Ostia. She did not care where her body was buried. She asked only that her sons remember her at the altar of the Lord, wherever they might be (Confessiones IX.11.27). St. Gregory the Great tells of a monk named Justus, for whom Mass was offered on thirty successive days, after which he appeared to say that he had been freed (Dialogi IV.57). From that story comes the custom of the thirty Gregorian Masses.
For centuries, then, the Church prayed for the dead every day, at every Mass, in the Memento of the Canon. A single day for all of them came later. Around the year 998, St. Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, decreed that in all the monasteries of his order, on the day after All Saints, the Office of the Dead and Masses should be offered for all the faithful departed. The statute survives. Through the vast network of Cluniac houses the custom spread across Western Europe, and Rome had adopted it by the fourteenth century. The placement was chosen with care. The Church rejoices first with those who have arrived, and then turns at once to those still on their way.
The privilege of three Masses began in Spain. The Dominicans of Valencia had it in the fifteenth century, and Pope Benedict XIV extended it to all priests in Spain, Portugal and their dominions in 1748. In 1915, in the middle of the Great War, with the dead of Europe numbering in the millions and countless Mass foundations lost to confiscation, Pope Benedict XV extended it to the whole Church in the apostolic constitution Incruentum altaris. One Mass may be offered for any intention, one must be offered for all the faithful departed, and one for the intention of the Holy Father.
IV. The Mass as a whole: from dust, through fire, into light
St. Thomas teaches that all things go forth from God and return to Him. Today the Collect states that pattern in its first line: Fidelium, Deus, omnium conditor et redemptor, “O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful.” Creator, because we went forth from Him. Redeemer, because He brings us back.
The going forth, and the fall. We came forth from God with life, and we turned away from Him and found death. “By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death” (Rom. 5:12). This is the sting of which St. Paul speaks: death is not natural to man as God made him. It is the wage of sin. Every coffin preaches this. The Sequence does not soften it: Mors stupebit et natura, / cum resurget creatura, / iudicanti responsura. “Death and nature shall stand amazed, when creation rises again to answer to its Judge.” We cannot get home by our own strength. The road back is blocked by the very thing we chose.
The return. Christ opens the road again. He goes down into death and draws its sting. His voice, which has life in itself, calls souls back to life now and will call bodies back at the end. St. Thomas teaches that the Resurrection of Christ is the cause of our own: the efficient cause of the resurrection of all, and the exemplar of the glorified resurrection of the just (Summa Theologiae III, q. 56). Purgatory is part of this return. It is not a third destination beside heaven and hell. It is the last stretch of the road to heaven, where love finishes what love began.
The hinge is the Offertory. Here the Church’s prayer for the dead reaches its most ancient and vivid form: Domine Iesu Christe, Rex gloriæ, libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu… sed signifer sanctus Michael repræsentet eas in lucem sanctam: quam olim Abrahæ promisisti, et semini eius. “O Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and from the deep pit… but may the standard-bearer St. Michael bring them into the holy light, which Thou didst promise of old to Abraham and to his seed.” The words describe the moment of death as a passage through danger, and they ask that the soul be led safely through it. The prayer stands at the moment the gifts are offered, because the Sacrifice is how the Church helps her dead. St. Thomas teaches that the Mass is the chief of all suffrages, since in it the Church offers Christ Himself, whose merit is infinite (Summa Theologiae, Suppl., q. 71). St. Augustine adds the necessary qualification. Our prayers help those who, while they lived, deserved to be helped by them; that is, those who died in grace (Enchiridion 110). The Church’s prayer is not magic. It flows within the communion of the Body.
The journey ends where the Introit began: in light. The Communion antiphon sings Lux æterna luceat eis, Domine: cum Sanctis tuis in æternum, quia pius es. “May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord, with Thy saints for ever: for Thou art merciful.” Cum Sanctis tuis. With the saints of yesterday’s feast. Today’s prayer is that the multitude no man can number may grow larger still.
V. The Collects
Fidelium, Deus, omnium conditor et redemptor: animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum; ut indulgentiam, quam semper optaverunt, piis supplicationibus consequantur.
“O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of Thy servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins: that through our devout supplications they may obtain the pardon they have always desired.”
The Collect asks for remissio cunctorum peccatorum, remission of all sins, meaning the full release from everything their sins have left behind. It notes that the dead always desired this pardon. They died wanting God. What they wanted in life they now receive through the prayers of others, piis supplicationibus. The souls cannot pray for themselves in a way that shortens their own suffering. Our prayers become theirs.
Hostias, quæsumus, Domine, quas tibi pro animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum offerimus, propitiatus intende: ut, quibus fidei christianæ meritum contulisti, dones et præmium.
“Look with favour, we beseech Thee, O Lord, upon the offerings which we make to Thee for the souls of Thy servants and handmaids: that to those on whom Thou didst bestow the merit of Christian faith, Thou mayest also grant its reward.”
The Secret uses the language of merit and reward. God gave them faith in this life. Now the Church asks Him to give what faith was always meant to lead to.
Animabus, quæsumus, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum oratio proficiat supplicantium: ut eas et a peccatis omnibus exuas, et tuæ redemptionis facias esse participes.
“May the prayer of Thy suppliants profit the souls of Thy servants and handmaids, O Lord: that Thou mayest both free them from all their sins, and make them partakers of Thy redemption.”
The Postcommunion uses the verb exuere, “to strip off,” as one takes off old clothes. It is the reverse of St. Paul’s induere. The soul is first stripped of the last remnants of sin. Then, at the resurrection, the body is clothed with incorruption.
VI. A word for practice
Examine. Do I pray for my dead, or do I only miss them? Have I let a funeral pass with eulogies but no Masses? Do I assume that those I love are already in heaven, and so leave them without help? Am I living now in the first resurrection, risen from sin, so that I need not fear the second? Is there any sin I would not want to carry before the Son of man who will judge me?
Do. Have a Mass offered for a deceased relative or friend, and if you can, for the most forgotten soul in Purgatory. Visit a cemetery during this octave and pray at a grave. Under the present discipline, a plenary indulgence applicable only to the souls in Purgatory may be gained by those who visit a cemetery and pray for the dead on any day from 1 to 8 November, and today by those who visit a church or oratory and pray the Pater noster and Credo there, under the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Holy Communion, prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father, and freedom from all attachment to sin. Write down the names of your dead and keep the list in your missal.
Pray. Pray the De profundis (Ps. 129) for the faithful departed. If you can, say or hear the Office of the Dead, or at least its Vespers. Pray the Rosary for the souls, and after each decade say the Requiem æternam.
Aspiration. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen. “Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.”
Devote. November is the month of the Holy Souls. Make it a habit, all month, to add the Requiem æternam to grace before meals and to the end of your night prayers. Ask your Guardian Angel and St. Michael, the signifer sanctus, to lead home the souls you pray for. And ask the souls themselves, once they reach heaven, to remember you.
If you wish to go deeper: the Theology and Doctrine path takes up the doctrine of Purgatory as defined at Florence and Trent, the distinction between guilt and temporal punishment, and St. Thomas on the resurrection of the body and on suffrages for the dead. The Sacred Liturgy path studies the Mass Requiem, the Dies iræ, the Office of the Dead, the Absolution at the catafalque, and the three Masses of this day. The Church History path follows St. Odilo’s Cluny and the spread of the commemoration, and Benedict XV’s Incruentum altaris in the shadow of the Great War. The East-West thread compares the Roman 2 November with the Byzantine Soul Saturdays before Lent and Pentecost. The Spiritual Practices path continues with the Gregorian Masses, the Heroic Act of Charity, and the November devotions for the faithful departed.
Sources. Scripture is cited from the Douay-Rheims with the Vulgate. The Fathers and Doctors are given in paraphrase with their loci: Tertullian, De corona 3 and De resurrectione carnis 50-51; St. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses V.13.3; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses mystagogicæ 5.9; St. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Epistulam I ad Corinthios 41-42, and the Paschal homily attributed to him; St. Jerome, Epistula 119; St. Augustine, Confessiones IX.11.27, De civitate Dei XIII.5 and XX.6, De Trinitate I.13, Enchiridion 110, and Tractatus in Ioannem 19; St. Gregory the Great, Dialogi IV.57; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 56, and Supplement, q. 71. The Cluniac origin of the commemoration follows the statute of St. Odilo; the extension of the three Masses follows Benedict XIV (1748) and Benedict XV, Incruentum altaris (1915). The attribution of the Dies iræ to Thomas of Celano is traditional and not certain.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine.