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Views from the Choir Loft

The Spirit of All Souls’ Day

Fr. David Friel · October 22, 2017

LL SOULS’ DAY lies just around the corner. November 2nd is typically a day filled with Masses—the result of the Church’s longing for the salvation of the departed and her confidence in the merits of the Lord’s sacrifice to obtain that salvation.

It has been the Church’s longstanding practice to permit priests to offer Mass not once, not twice, but even three times on this day. The same permission is granted for only one other observance of the liturgical year: Christmas Day. For a discussion of this permission and whether it constitutes an encouragement, take a look at two posts from a couple of years ago (here and here).

The ethos of All Souls’ Day stands in stark contradistinction to the universalism of our age. When attending a Catholic funeral or a Mass on All Souls’ Day, one does not encounter the spirit of “life celebration.” This idea is, indeed, foreign to the funeral and All Souls’ Day liturgies.

What these liturgies do clearly convey is a spirit of profound grief and mourning, salved by the hope of resurrected life. On the fittingness of this liturgical spirit, Dietrich von Hildebrand writes:

It is a regrettable sophism to say (as it was sometimes said in sermons) that the death of a father or mother, husband or wife, or of a child, is no reason for sadness as long as they have died well, after receiving the last Sacraments, as long as we can hope that they are with God. Of course the eternal happiness of one whom we truly love is the most important thing, but separation from the beloved, even if only for a time, remains a terrible cross.

Whoever does not feel this cross, whoever just happily goes his way with the consolation that the beloved has found eternal happiness, is not directed to eternity in a special way—he is simply insensitive and does not want to be disturbed in the normal rhythm of his daily life. He is simply making a comfortable excuse when he emphasizes that the eternal salvation of the other is the most important thing. He has forgotten that even Jesus Christ, the God-Man, prayed in Gethsemane: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” He does not understand that a cross which has been imposed on us should be suffered under as a cross. Only then can we attain to the true consolation which lies in the perspective of eternity, to the true hope of eternal blessedness.” [Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Devastated Vineyard (1973), pg. 130]

Again this year, many parishes will offer special commemorations of the faithful departed on or near November 2nd. I would like to draw your attention to just two.

First, the National Shrine of St. John Paul II here in Washington, DC has announced that they will host a Missa Cantata at 7 PM on November 2nd in their main church (3900 Harewood Road NE, Washington, DC). Faure’s Requiem in D minor (Op. 48) will be sung, adhering closely to the original instrumentation for strings, choir, and soloists. Of this Mass, the composer once wrote: “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

Second, the Catholic Artists Society will host their 15th annual solemn Requiem Mass on November 13th at 7 PM in the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer (869 Lexington Avenue, NYC). The music for this Mass will be Mozart’s Requiem in D minor (K. 626). This society is the same group that sponsors the Art of the Beautiful lecture series, featured before on these pages.

Requiescant in pace!

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: All Souls, Requiem Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

Thus in 1905 the Vatican Kyriale appeared with rhythmic signs and the following legend: “Præsens exemplar, rhythmicis signis a Solesmensibus monachis ornatum, typicae Vaticanæ editioni de cætero plane conforme repertum est.” (This copy, provided with rhythmic signs by the monks of Solesmes, completely agrees in every other respect with the Vatican original.)

— Dom Gregory Hügle, OSB

Recent Posts

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  • “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
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  • “Breathtaking Photographs” • First Mass of Father Michael Caughey, FSSP (Muskegon, MI)
  • “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)

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