The Liturgy/Requiem Mass

The bracketed section below is a formal presentation/explanation of liturgical prayer, but you can begin below where the first line is in deep red...then revert back to this later should you require background information.  You will understand better if you start there.. 

{The Liturgy is itself a means by which God is enabled to reach down to his subject providing the subject wishes to know and love God.   It enables the traveller-seeker to accompany Christ from birth and throughout his public life. More than that, it goes back to the beginning of man and opens up his future in relation to Christ. It allows listening to a dialogue taking place between God and each prophet in the Old Testament, then hearing the apostles making sense of it in the New Testament - at the same time seeing where it all leads through the Gospels of the four evangelists.

We repeat this cycle each year beginning with his birth. This continues right through his time immediately prior to his 40 days in the desert (Lent), his Passion, Death (bearing our sins to meet the demands of justice that we could not pay) and Resurrection (Easter.) which conquers death as promised to Adam. The death that is conquered is the two-fold death where Adam tested God putting a barrier up between himself and his creator, AND the resultant physical death which is the wages of sin. Through liturgical prayer we are absorbed into a state of being present in different places at the same time. Firmly anchored in our own time, the past and future open up in an organic whole. God does not just do something and hey presto we are zapped clean. He treats us with the greatest courtesy so that we can make up our own minds about things, but if we only have the written history (bible) and words from the pulpit to refer to it is not enough. Things begin to take on another dimension (Book of Wisdom) when we read......

I am not praying unless I pray to the Father through Christ and the only way I can pray through Christ is, not only with him, but in him. No matter how good my intentions are, whilst I 'pray' with my natural senses I miss the boat. I have to acquire a supernatural gift from God in order to pray. People appeal to a higher authority when they utter a prayer for themselves or for others when in distress...there is no specific objective other than relief of suffering.   The Church teaches us that prayer is a continuous unbroken state of the soul seeking union with God in Christ who is the way, the truth and the life.  Using common sense, scripture reading alone do not reach the objective.   A personal relationship with Jesus is not true prayer if it remains personal. To be Catholic one enters the mystical body of Christ and a Catholic does not pray just for himself or by himself. Prayer is a universal domain entered into through personal prayer which searches for unity with and in the one true God and with each other.  (See page on Intercession).

The Mass is an ongoing event where Our Lord is continually interceding for us. It is His action and does not depend on us for its continuance whether we are saint of sinner . This is the real bulwark of our faith.   A seeker can only seek out what is there. He has no part in creating what is there.  He cannot find something that is not there.  And, if perchance it was not there then faith would be no more - the Church would be no more.

Down through the centuries the Catholic faith has stood the test of time.  Our forbears and forefathers have bequeathed to us a treasure chest loaded and overflowing with the jewels of what they have discovered through the exercise of their search for union with Christ.   The beauty of this is that, as God is approached through his drawing power, true saints come to realise slowly but surely that they are not worthy. They come to realise that Christ suffered and died

 for his/her sins...to the soul so disposed is given the grace to see inside his own soul to be able to comprehend its great poverty of spirit...it's state of unredemption.   This realisation leaves one desolate and helpless until, like  a dry cracked plane where  clear sparkling water begins to flow gently about, the soul is refreshed with new life and growth cleansing it.   It remains an oasis in the desert to which one returns time and time again for refreshment from the moment of its discovery.

                               ...................................

With use, this oasis becomes a flowing river that bridges the gap between this mortal life and the

eternal life whence it had its beginning and returns to its source - its eternal destination with Christ in heaven.   The Liturgy speaks again in a special way so that when the time comes to die it becomes a good thing to give some idea of its power.}

I write this simple document so as to help you, my sons, to follow and understand the beauty of the Requiem Mass for the dead.   I will personalise it so that you will know what is happening to me every minute this Sacrament operates.  And it operates unceasingly because the Church prays unceasingly.   Do not be dismayed by the black vestments.  My Mother the Church tells me that ‘black is a beautiful colour’. Here, there will be no eulogies about my life on earth because the ceremony focuses single-mindedly on God who is drawing my soul to Himself.  The Church has the authority to speak for me, pray for me when I cannot pray for myself.   She calls on the angels to lead me through these particular prayers at this Mass to accompany my soul.   My Mother prays for me during the  time where my soul is separated from my body (death)...that is until the last day of the world's existence.   If you read the section 'Passport to Heaven' you will understand the power of the Sacrament of  Baptism which made me a citizen of heaven which was continually renewed during my lifetime as a practicing Catholic.   Your prayers, particularly your Rosaries, will keep Our Lady close to me.  Thus will she too will lead me throughout this passage between earth and heaven, and will keep me close to each one of you until your time comes. I would love you to continue this practice for each other when each one’s time comes.  I have grown to love her dearly and trust one day you too will  know the joy of loving her. 

You see, I can no longer pray for myself now that I am on this final stage of my journey.  It is only when you are alive that  prayers can become part of the permanent prayer of the Church...so that being alive you boys can continue that stream for me when I can no longer pray for myself.
The function and purpose of a Catholic funeral is to accompany my soul each step of the way until it reaches its final destination.

However I can, and will unceasingly pray for  you: Allan, Robert, Geoffrey/Stephen/
Glenn, Gregory and Peter.   Whenever you pray the Rosary you will will feel close to me.  The Chuch has the power provided by her Founder, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to accompany the deceased person on this journey/passage. For as long as the Church exists She prays continuously for those who have died in her Arms. These Arms are actually the Arms of Christ Himself manifested in Sacramental form since His Crucifixion.


Throughout the soul’s Catholic journey on earth the begottenness, mentioned below , has proceeded through the continuous reception of the Sacraments but cannot reach full fruition until it passes through death. The final Sacrament (Extreme Unction) means that the Church, in Christ’s name, has placed her redeeming stamp on the soul. Christ said to St. Peter (Church):


‘Whasotever thou shalt bind upon earth it shall be bound also in heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven’ 

This means that God binds himself to whatever His Church has loosed upon earth.  I need to revert to a more formal description at this point (see opening paragraph) so that you can have an objective view, but you can continue to personalise it by seeing that it applies to me

 No soul can stand before the Father of Christ (God) without the Advocacy of Christ His son, Who, showing His Father the Wounds he has suffered on account of that soul procures its eternal salvation. No-one can enter the Kingdom of Christ’s Heaven without this stamp. It can never be claimed as a right, neither can it be earned, purchased or stolen. It is purely gratuitous obtained only through God’s Mercy to a poor pitiful sinner He loves infinitely and for whom He has laid down His Life. 
                                                           
i) Our Lord referred to Himself as Son of Man.

ii) Not only true God, but true man – when Christ was crucified and died He no longer appears on earth in human flesh, for when a man is killed of course he is not seen alive again. Being true God, however, His Body did not corrupt as do our bodies. Instead, His transfigured flesh and blood Body has risen and He has ascended/returned to His Father in heaven whence He came – but now clothed in human but incorruptible flesh. Christ was not generated as we are generated. He was begotten. St. John’s Gospel (1:1-17) tells us that those who have reeived Christ Sacramentally (Baptism/Confirmation/Confession/Holy Communion) have, by those Sacraments, become begotten – in short, Christ was begotten of and by the Father and in receiving Christ ourselves, we, who were generated by our parents now share in his Divinity/begottenness. In other words, Christ begets us.

iii) A close reading of this full text from St. John…says everything.

                                                             ******************************