All Souls

 

It's the Solemnity of All Souls, Dies Irae, and we pray for the faithful departed. May they rest in peace and rise in glory, most especially our many absent brothers and sisters. Farrer, as always, raises the bar:

The arithmetic of death perplexes our brains. What can we do but throw ourselves upon the infinity of God? It is only to a finite mind that number is an obstacle, or multiplicity a distraction. Our mind is like a box of limited content, out of which one thing must be emptied before another can find a place. The universe of creatures is queuing for a turn of our attention, and no appreciable part of the queue will ever get a turn. But no queue forms before the throne of everlasting mercy, because the nature of an infinite mind is to be simply aware of everything that is. 

Everything is simply present to an infinite mind, because it exists; or rather, exists because it is present to that making mind. And though by some process of averaging and calculation I should compute the grains of sand, it would be like the arithmetic of the departed souls, an empty sum; I could not tell them as they are told in the infinity of God’s counsels, each one separately present as what it is, and simply because it is. 

O GOD, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful: grant to 

the souls of Thy servants and handmaidens the remission of 

all their sins: that, through pious supplications, they may obtain 

that pardon which they have always desired: Who livest and 

reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the 

Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Rest eternal grant unto them O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon them.

May they rest in peace,

LSP