Two Deaths and Two Masses: The Healing Power of the Requiem

The following is a guest post submitted by a friend of this blog who wishes his reflections to remain anonymous.

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One night while driving back from a visit with my parents, I received a call from a friend who, after learning that I was still on the road, told me in an ominous tone to call him once I’ve arrived home. Doing so a few minutes later, he told me that our mutual friend suddenly collapsed and died earlier that afternoon on a hiking trip. The news came as a shock to us and to the rest of our parish and local Catholic community, since my friend had been healthy in his early twenties; what's worse, he was scheduled to be married in a few weeks. My initial dumbstruck response gave way to a morose muteness as I struggled to get the rest of my night routine done, which then turned into anguished cries of grief when I turned to prayer that night before bed.

I was more or less in this state until a week later, during his wake and funeral Mass. As he was devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass, it was announced that a Requiem Mass was going to be sung for his funeral. Before the Mass—and especially during the wake—I was still at the nadir of my distress at his passing. Immediately after, however, I felt that the worst of the storm had passed and begun to look back at our relatively brief acquaintance in joy and thanksgiving. I was, and am still grieving, but I feel like I have sufficiently processed my emotions so that the pain of his passing has been lessened, making it bearable enough to move on, until the time we meet again.

As I was meditating through the ceremonies and texts of the Missa pro defunctis, it became clear to me that the Requiem Mass was central in allowing me to tend to my grief.  Once again, the Church, being the caring mother that she is, created and developed a fitting ritual that allows Christians to lament the evil of death, but also be reminded of the hope of the resurrection to come, as was promised by the resurrection of her own Lord and Spouse, Jesus Christ.

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Fourteen years ago, however, when I was at a different period in my life, I experienced the first death that impacted me personally, that of my maternal grandfather. I was of course affected more strongly, but this was somewhat colored by my then lack of familiarity with death as a younger person. And unlike in my friend’s death, here I do not remember the exact moment of closure; I simply got healing as time went by, the tender memories of my grandfather eventually giving way to the more pressing concerns of the living. Certainly, I did not have this closure once I saw his casket lowered into the grave, or during any of the post-burial conversations we had as a family, or after the Mass said for his soul was finished. This Mass was, as I would learn later, is a different Mass from what has been offered for deceased Catholics until the reforms of Vatican II. This was the post-conciliar "Mass of Christian Burial," with markedly different prayers, ceremonies, and other externals like music and vestments, which together form a rite that emphasizes a new perspective on dealing with the universal human consternation with death.

Throughout this essay, I will not so much focus on an intensive and systematic analysis of the Requiem Mass or a comparative study with its Novus Ordo equivalent, as others have already written extensively on this. I will instead focus on how and why the Requiem Mass ultimately helped me cope—and how and why the Mass of Christian Burial didn’t. I believe that this was the case for the other mourners as well. As such, this would be somewhat personal and subjective, yet would include echoes of familiar arguments about the differences of the Novus Ordo and the traditional rites as a whole, as seen specifically in the funeral rites.

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Upon entering the church for my friend's Requiem—despite it being a sunny noon—I immediately noticed the somber space inside. It helped that the lights were turned on which outshone the daylight from the stained-glass windows, and that most of the mourners wore black (this seems to be a dying tradition in the West today). Also, from the body’s entrance to the church and up to its departure, a professional choir sang chant and polyphony (in Latin of course). Since it was a Solemn High Mass, the ministers wore the traditional mourning color of the Roman liturgy. Black has that stark quality of emptiness and lays bare the gloom of our suffering. The casket was also draped in black cloth with a silver crucifix laid on it. It was apparent to me and everyone that day that this was not the normal Mass seen every Sunday.  

Nothing about this was surprising to me or to anyone who regularly goes to a TLM, so here I imagine what non-Catholics (or at least regular Novus Ordo Mass attendees) would have derived from this atmosphere. It is especially worth mentioning that my friend’s family and relations are not Catholic. If some of them might have previously seen aspects of the Requiem Mass in popular culture and thought it to be something morbid, like a passing fad for teenaged goths, our shared grief should have disabused them of these misconceptions. If this did not convince them of the truths of the Catholic faith through the austere beauty of the rites, or at least sowed seeds that by the grace of God will bloom later in their hearts, it at least conveyed to them that the Catholic Church shared in their sorrow by arranging her rites for the dead in a fitting manner. The setting of the music further contributed to this fittingness. There must have been that sense of the hauntingly beautiful, of the sublimely painful emotion that the Church, in these rites, feel toward her departed son. Haunting and painful, because today she is in agony; but sublime and beautiful, because it is really her cry from the depths to her Lord—not a simple human memorial service. But even if it were a Low Mass, I think it would have still conveyed the appropriate tone, since the music of the High Mass only gave voice to the silent suffering of our hearts without breaking the silence. Regarding the use of Latin, which they likely did not understand nor comprehend the purpose for, they would have at least been further convinced of the seriousness the Church bears toward death. And as they know that this is the language of Ancient Rome, they would have easily deduced the antiquity of this ritual; intuitively they would have been assured that the Church has acquired, through the slow maturation of the ages, the applied wisdom to grapple with the most harrowing loss visible in this world of the senses. Here, a dead language of a long-dead civilization is a solace to the living. Even if they had no common faith with the Church they would trust her solicitude for this day at least.

As the Mass proceeded with its manifold prayers, the Collect signaled that the Church was joining us in this difficult time, recognizing our anguish and allowing us to express in her words the sentiments of our hurt. The Collect goes thus:

O God, Whose property is ever to have mercy and to spare, we humbly entreat Thee on behalf of the soul of Thy servant (handmaid) N., whom Thou hast bidden this day to pass out of this world: that Thou wouldst not deliver him into the hands of the enemy, nor forget him for ever, but command him to be taken up by the holy angels, and to be borne to our home in Paradise, that as he had put his faith and hope in Thee, he may not undergo the pains of Hell but may possess everlasting joys. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.

But as an ever-solicitous mother for our true good, here the Church simultaneously reminds us of the need to pray for the soul of the departed, no matter how much we thought he was a good person. This is easily forgotten in the abyss of one’s sorrow. And this is the primary reason, after all, for the impetrative end of the Requiem Mass—the remission of the temporal punishments of the soul in Purgatory. The absolution given after the dismissal of the people makes this even more vivid:

Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O Lord; for, save Thou grant him forgiveness of all his sins, no man shall be justified in Thy sight. Wherefore, suffer not, we beseech Thee, the sentence Thou pronouncest in judgement upon one whom the faithful prayer of Christian people commends to Thee, to be a doom which shall crush him utterly. Rather, succour him by Thy gracious favour, that he may escape Thine avenging justice who, in his lifetime, was signed with the seal of the Holy Trinity: Who livest and reignest, world without end.

The sheer reality of a single mortal sin condemning us to the everlasting pain and loss of Hell is brought to the fore, and we are enjoined to consider this possibility for the soul in question. This reaches its zenith in the sequence Dies Irae, which was excised by the reformers from the Roman Missal since it apparently “smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages” and “overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair” (and consequently only heard now in anything that is redolent of the macabre thanks to Hollywood, as a familiar yet forgotten melody). Yet Bugnini et al. selectively ignored lines which still speak of the hope of eternal bliss, such as these:

Seeking me, You rested, tired:

You redeemed [me], having suffered the Cross:
let not such hardship be in vain

... 

You Who absolved Mary,
and heard the robber,
gave hope to me also.

And of course, the sequence ends with this couplet:

Merciful Lord Jesus,
grant them rest. Amen.

During the singing of the Dies Irae, I was once again reduced into tears, spurred on by the gravitas of the texts and the fitting mode of the piece. Yet by forcing me to meditate on the severity and exactness of the last judgment (and the soul’s particular judgment), I was able to be freed from the existential snare for the Christian, which should really be his fundamental worry—that is, to rely on himself for his own salvation. Rather, it is the lamb who was sacrificed on the Cross on whom my friend’s—and my—salvation depends. This then helped me to trust God that he has heard our prayers and to finally look forward to the day when I reunite with him in Heaven, separated no more by the cruel veil of death. Furthermore, I felt assured that my wishes for my friend’s salvation were also the Church’s own wishes expressed in her funeral sequence.

The Epistle and Gospel leave no doubt for this. In the Epistle, Mother Church takes the words of the Apostle as her own: 

Brethren: We will not have you ignorant concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope; for, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, them who have slept through Jesus will God bring with Him. (1 Thess. 4:13)

 Here she tells us that she has heard our lament and reminds us of the bodily resurrection of Jesus that is promised to all. Then she adds to this the words of Her Lord in the Gospel: 

I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live; and every one that liveth and believeth in Me, shall not die for ever. (John 11:25)

The testimony of Martha, a saint, then helps us confess this faith that might have been dimmed by our grief: 

Jesus saith to her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith to Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. (John 11:24)

From all these prayers and Scripture citations, it becomes manifest that the Requiem Mass encompasses all the varied thoughts and emotions that a Christian mourner goes through—the pain of the loss of the beloved, life, the fear of the real possibility of the soul’s damnation, the hope in their resurrection and their assumption to eternal life, and the desire for commiseration from the words his own God, and his own passion and death, supported by the testimony of the saints who were not confounded in their holy desires. There is really no reason at all to remove the Dies Irae, if seen in the totality of the Mass itself. It might very well be the case that the Dies Irae, being the product of a theology that was imprinted by the character of a part of the medieval era where plagues, wars, and destitution were commonplace. Yet it also attests not only to the permanence of this liturgy, where the contrasting succession of eras instead lends us differing points of meditation on the four last things.

After the body was driven by the hearse back to the funeral home, I knew that for me at least, I have already cried my most voluminous tears. The dark night that has eclipsed my spirit for the past week instead gave way to the purple and gold stirrings of a new dawn. Here I have accepted, maybe a little hesitant still, that he was gone, but that now is the time to be thankful for his life. I can now instead ponder on his virtues—his kindness, his generosity toward all, and to his abiding joy in the Gospel. We then honored his magnanimity in life with a potluck for everyone who paid their respects. Yet if this would have been the climax of the funeral for some people today, it was only the suitable conclusion here, and only for the living. We were not only gathered there because we had the acquaintance of his life on earth, but also because that we were first united together in our sorrows and prayers as the Mystical Body of Christ in this side of heaven. We were able to take solace together in fellowship and Christian brotherhood only because we were able to worthily ask succor for my friend’s soul, show gratitude for his life, offer remorse for his and our sins, and worship Him who alone has power over life and death.

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This experience could not have been any more different from the experience of my grandfather’s death. Now to be fair, his funeral Mass was said by a single priest without a choir in a smaller, comparatively unadorned chapel, and that it was celebrated in the Philippines, a country where the post-conciliar devastation of the liturgy for the most part has gone unabated. It also cannot be said that cultural differences when it comes to mourning played a part; the Philippines treats death seriously like any other Catholic country (in fact, one can only try to count the numerous taboos and superstitions, for example, that Filipinos observe during the mourning period). Given these caveats and the fact that this manner of celebrating the modern Mass for the Dead is still heard of nowadays even in the States, I do not think I am missing the mark terribly here.

The death of my grandfather was also quite sudden, as he was not exactly terminally ill, although he wasn’t doing well either. At the Mass, the priest wore the notorious chasuble-alb with a purple stole over it. This priest's whole personality and attitude toward the death of my grandfather would define the tenor of the Mass that day. In the homily, he simply assured us that our beloved patriarch was not suffering anymore and was in Heaven, while being inappropriately peppy the whole time—at least too peppy for a funeral. It’s almost as if, in his fatuous attempt to comfort us, he told us that it didn’t make sense to grieve, since my grandfather was surely already at peace. What then, is the purpose of this liturgy, tackily celebrated and not fitting at all to the gravity of the occasion? This is perhaps another reason why I remembered nothing of the texts said that day, since there was no attempt to say them worthily, if not in chant but at least in a suitable manner; after all, the readings of the Novus Ordo are primarily for teaching, not for worship.

Looking back, this Mass could at least have been a teaching moment for me on how the (post-conciliar) Church handled death as a serious affair and an opportunity to witness her sincere concern toward those who grieve. A simple yet dignified Mass would have given us the respect that is the minimum toward any death. A more beautiful Mass with music and ceremonial would have at least convinced me of the good taste of Catholics and would have been a small consolation. But no; there were none of these in this Mass. It was only something to be borne with—an obligation at best, a chore at worst. It only delayed the burial which at least gave me some semblance of finality.

The ugly vestments in the wrong liturgical color, the deficient ceremonial, the lean prayers due to being excised of anything deemed offensive to mourners, and even the inappropriate attitude of the priest, would simply be distractions taken indivdiually. But together, they imparted to me a different perspective, a novel manner of how the faithful were expected to come to terms with death. It seemed to express that death is some event that separates us from our loved ones, but we should not worry about it, and we should just anticipate being with them again. Let us think more about the gift of their lives and try to be cheerful instead!  By not treating death with the seriousness it deserves, which it is as the consequence of sin, this Mass ends up tending more to our suffering, not about the suffering of the soul due to his unremitted sins (but remember, we shouldn’t be too glum!).  

Perhaps the priest really knew how to address our pain, but he had no choice but to put on the face the New Mass expected of him as the celebrant (and ultimately, he had to take cues from the training he received from his seminary formation). But even if he tried to make things right somehow, by making some or all elements conform more to the manner of the Traditional Requiem Mass, and that of human mourning in general, it would have been off, akin to a goth kid wearing all black in an otherwise colorful birthday party. Nor would the nuggets of explicit Catholic teaching that remain in the readings, (like the necessity of prayers for the dead) fully communicate the truths of the Catholic faith to the grieving loved ones of the deceased, since it did not affirm their grief in a manner fitting and evocative with the gravity of the occasion—especially when it begs the question of why these prayers need to be said to begin with! 

The process of grief naturally progresses through stages, from the sudden shock of the beloved’s death, the emotional coming to terms with their absence, to the final acceptance of their loss and hope for the future. The appropriate expression of this depends foremost on a ritual fitting enough for the natural order to send them off, so to speak. Anthropologists describe these rituals that humans undergo from birth, coming-of-age, assumption into positions of responsibility, and death in the context of liminality (from the Latin limen, “threshold”), since the person in question is in a state where he is on the threshold—not quite here, but not fully there either. We can say that the mourners are also "on the threshold" with regards to their grief toward the deceased.

If the rite neither assists us to process these emotions in some ritual form, nor make them correspond with the journey of the soul to its final destination as represented in the rite—how can it, as the funeral rite of the Church, help you properly cope? And if we are talking about the funeral rites of the true religion, how can it fulfill its supernatural ends adequately if it fails its natural ends spectacularly?

The Mass of Christian Burial, in trying to tend to mourners first over the deceased—yet in a way that does not respect the natural grieving process—ends up doing little for both.

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A defender of the Novus Ordo might respond that these impressions are subjective and particularly representative of someone who attends the TLM. It might very well be that many can manage with less than what the Requiem Mass can give them, or do not need to ask for more from the Mass of Christian Burial. But you can never divorce the pain of the individual Christian from the pain that the whole Body of Christ goes through with the death of one of its members—"And if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it; or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Cor. 12:26). The Church ought to offer the most beautiful, noble, and edifying liturgy that she can give to her children, whether in joy or in weeping. She must always be like the shepherd who would leave ninety-nine of his sheep to retrieve the one who went astray. Beyond the question of sin and as applied to grief, she needs to have more solicitude over those who find it harder to come to terms with loss. She needs the brightest light to shine over those immured in the blackest darkness.  

Moreover, the common defense of shifting the blame of the deficiencies of the Novus Ordo to the disposition of the individual churchgoer—or in the case the individual mourner—is expressly inappropriate and thoughtless here. Would it really be proper to put the onus on the individual mourner to have a better appreciation of the new funeral Mass, given that he is currently dealing with a lot on his plate? "Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone?" (Mt. 7:9). Surely most apologists of the Novus Ordo would hopefully avoid using this in the context of a funeral, but the logic remains applicable here.

Perhaps there are post-conciliar funeral Masses that come close to a Solemn Requiem Mass, but like the perpetually-discussed "unicorn Novus Ordo," one wonders where they are. One would hope that when it comes to funerals, they would not be rare like unicorns, but common as horses instead. More importantly, the Novus Ordo should be judged on the deviations it allows, not on the options that follow tradition more closely. As it is, we have funeral Masses that only sufficiently comfort some people—and I am not even talking about the refreshment it brings to souls. It is hard to think of comprable mediocrity in the Latin Mass (this doesn’t include the Requiem Low Mass, which, to be clear, still plainly reveals the silence of suffering without recourse to music or a richer ceremonial).    

Besides the loss of our loved ones, we are also confronted with another far widespread loss: the loss of our time-honored rites of mourning, from which the saints found respite in the darkest depths of their despair. On a merely human level, we lost practices founded in ancient wisdom and common sense that communicate ubiquitous truths about death, grief, and the afterlife, and how to come to terms with them. The modern Church, in her recklessness to live up to the “sign of the times,” desired to make a funeral liturgy for the modern man, which presupposes that modern man has truly changed.  I think this could only be the case if man has conquered death. But as earthly life will never last forever with our meager efforts alone, we can never change how we mourn—and how we can be consoled.

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After my friend's funeral, while still sad for his early death, I felt good enough to be grateful to God that the Mass that nourished his soul here on earth was said for its departure from this world of difficulty and strife. This was denied for generations of Catholics, but not for him, who has only recently discovered its treasures. And I am grateful that the Requiem Mass, beyond a consolation to those he left behind, was able to show them a glimpse of that beautiful, sublime, and true religion which has made him into a devoted fiancé, son, brother, and friend.  But it is also sad to see that my grandfather, who went to the Old Mass for half his life, was not able to get a worthy funeral in the rite he knew. He and my friend could never be more alike in terms of being born in different times, almost a century apart; one lived a long and full life, while the other was taken away from the flower of his youth. In my grandfather’s passage to old age, the Mass of All Times was condemned to die a natural death; but in my friend’s untimely death, it has shown signs of its resurrection. And while I look forward to seeing my friend and my grandfather in that other, greater resurrection, in this life I also await the full restoration of the Mass that has consoled countless generations of Catholics, and which at their own deaths delivered them from this vale of tears.