​We offered a very moving Solemn Requiem yesterday for Remembrance Sunday, concluding with the Absolution of the Dead, wherein we remembered and prayed for all those who gave their lives for others in the conflicts and wars of the past. On Saturday evening the annual Festival of Remembrance was broadcast on the BBC. One of the  poems read aloud was the very moving High Flight, written by a 19 year-old RCAF pilot just a few months before his death over the skies of England. I’m surprised, after learning more about the fame of this poem, that I’d never come across it until this past weekend. I reproduce here.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee Jr, 1922-1941

‘[Y]ou must attach yourself to the eternal so that you belong to it, partake of its eternity. Hold fast to truth, and thereby belong to the One who is indestructible – that disposition now becomes quite real and quite close: Hold fast to Christ; he carries you through the night of death that he himself has overcome. In this way immortality comes to make sense. It is no longer an endless duplication of the present but rather something entirely new and yet still our eternity: to be in the hands of God and thereby one with all the brothers and sister he has created for us, to be one with creation – that is finally the true life, which we now can see only through the mist. Where there is no answer to the question of God, death remains a cruel puzzle, and every other answer leads into contradiction. If God exists, however, the God who has shown himself in Jesus Christ, then there is eternal life, and death is then also a way of hope’.
 
Pope Benedict XVI

O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all them that believe: grant unto the souls of thy servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins; that as they have ever desired thy merciful pardon, so by the supplications of their brethren they may receive the same; who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Divine Worship: The Missal.

​‘This season, when the Church anticipates and prepares for the tolling out of the old and the ringing in of the new secular year, is surely a time for facing ultimate realities. The four words, death, judgement, hell, and heaven, stand for four great mysteries, about which we ought to arrive at a conclusion as well as we can. Death is a fact, and it is just as well to face facts.
 
What is death? When life is withdrawn from the material body, the material envelope in which it mysteriously swells, we say that that is death. But science teaches us very clearly that matter cannot be destroyed: it can only be redistributed. Even when anything is burnt, it is not destroyed but merely reduced to its ultimate elements. If matter cannot be destroyed, it would be unreasonable to think that spirit can be destroyed.
 
In our incarnate state in this life we have a material body which subserves the purpose of our self-expression here. We can trust God, Who has given to us a material body for this stage of our eternal life, to provide us with a spiritual body to subserve the purposes of our self-expression in that higher stage to which we believe that at death we pass.
 
Our holy religion, though it is pre-eminently a way of life, does face the fact of death. Its great central service is the remembrance and the showing forth of a death, and its chief symbol is the crucifix, which holds up to us death – death revealing love, and love revealing death as sacrifice and prayer. Our religion interprets for us the fact of life, and gives us the truest philosophy about the fact of death’.

Father Andrew SDC, 1869-1946

‘“May they rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them” - those millions among whom our friends are lost, those millions for whom we cannot choose but pray; because prayer is a sharing in the love of the heart of God, and the love of God is earnestly set towards the salvation of his spiritual creatures, by, through and out of the fire that purifies them. 
 
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. 
 
The thought God gives to any of his creatures is not measured by the attention he can spare, but by the object for consideration they can supply. God is not divided; it is God, not a part of God, who applies himself to the falling sparrow, and to the crucified Lord. But there is more in the beloved Son than in the sparrow, to be observed and loved and saved by God. So every soul that has passed out of this visible world, as well as every soul remaining within it, is caught and held in the unwavering beam of divine care. And we may comfort ourselves for our own inability to tell the grains of sand, or to reckon the thousands of millions of the departed. 
 
And yet we cannot altogether escape so; for our religion is not a simple relation of every soul separately to God, it is a mystical body in which we are all members one of another. And in this mystical body it does not suffice that every soul should be embraced by the thoughts of God; it has also to be that every soul should, in its thought, embrace the other souls. For apart from this mutual embracing, it would be unintelligible why we should pray at all, either for the living or for the departed. Such prayer is nothing but the exercising of our membership in the body of Christ. God is not content to care for us each severally, unless he can also, by his Holy Spirit in each one of us, care through and in us for all the rest. Every one of us is to be a focus of that divine life of which the attractive power holds the body together in one. 
 
So even in the darkness and blindness of our present existence, our thought ranges abroad and spreads out towards the confines of the mystical Christ, remembering the whole Church of Christ, as well militant on earth as triumphant in heaven; invoking angels, archangels and all the spiritual host’.

from a sermon preached, 1960, by Austin Farrer, 1904-1968

‘Now it is certain that amongst our neighbours are to be reckoned the souls in purgatory, who, although no longer living in this world, yet have not left the communion of saints… Therefore, we ought to succour, according to our ability, those holy souls as our neighbours; and as their necessities are greater than those of our neighbours; and as their necessities are greater than those of our other neighbours, for this reason our duty to succour them seems also to be greater.

But now, what are the necessities of those holy prisoners? It is certain that their pains are immense. The fire that tortures them, says St Augustine, is more excruciating than any pain that man can endure in this life: “That fire will be more painful than anything that man can suffer in this life”… And this only relates to the pains of sense. But the pain of loss (that is, the privation of the sight of God), which those holy souls suffer, is much greater; because not only their natural affection, but also the supernatural love of God, wherewith they burn, draws them with such violence to be united with their Sovereign Good, that when they see the barrier which their sins have put in the way, they feel a pain so acute, that if they were capable of death, they could not live a moment.
 
…They are destined to reign with Christ; but they are withheld from taking possession of their kingdom till the time of their purgation is accomplished. And they cannot help themselves (at least not sufficiently, even according to those theologians who assert that they can by their prayers gain some relief,) to throw off their chains, until they have entirely satisfied the justice of God’.

from ‘Prayer, The Great Means of Obtaining Salvation and All the Graces
Which We Desire of God’ by St Alphonsus di Liguori, 1696-1787

‘Weep for those who die in their wealth and who with all their wealth prepared no consolation for their own souls, who had the power to wash away their sins and did not will to do it. Let us weep for them, let us assist them to the extent of our ability, let us think of some assistance for them, small as it may be, yet let us somehow assist them. But how, and in what way? By praying for them and by entreating others to pray for them, by constantly giving alms to the poor on their behalf. Not in vain was it decreed by the apostles that in the awesome mysteries remembrance should be made of the departed. They knew that here there was much gain for them, much benefit. When the entire people stands with hands uplifted, a priestly assembly, and that awesome sacrificial Victim is laid out, how, when we are calling upon God, should we not succeed in their defence? But this is done for those who have departed in the faith, while even the catechumens are not reckoned as worthy of this consolation, but are deprived of every means of assistance except one. And what is that? We may give alms to the poor on their behalf’.
 
from Homilies on Philippians 3.4-10 by St John Chrysostom, d.407

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon CH, 1869-1943

Some photos of today’s Solemn Mass of Requiem, which began with an Act of Remembrance and concluded with the Absolution of the Dead at the Catafalque. The setting of the Mass was the Missa pro defunctis, in Latin, and we sang ‘O God our help in ages past’, ‘I vow to thee my country’, and ‘O valiant hearts’, as well as a verse each of the National (‘O Canada’) and Royal (‘God save the Queen’) Anthems. The Offertory motet was Richard Farrant’s ‘Call to Remembrance’. The Dies irae was sung in English, according to Burgess’ plainsong setting, and the Libera Me was sung in Latin. We were very grateful to have a bugler from the 5th (British Columbia) Field Artillery Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery to play the Last Post and the Rouse for our Act of Remembrance. A very observance of Remembrance Sunday. The national celebration, tomorrow, of Remembrance Day will be kept with a Requiem Mass at 9.30 a.m.

O Lord our God, whose Name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: we thank thee for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; grant us, we beseech thee, that having them always in remembrance we may imitate their faithfulness and sacrifice; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Divine Worship: The Missal.

‘“We will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope”. The Church today has the same desire as the Apostle thus expressed to the first Christians. The truth concerning the dead not only proves admirably the union between God’s justice and his goodness; it also inspires a charitable pity which the hardest heart cannot resist, and at the same time offers to the mourners the sweetest consolation. If faith teaches us the existence of a purgatory, where our loved ones may be detained by unexpiated sin, it is also of faith that we are able to assist them; and theology assures us that their more or less speedy deliverance lies in our power. Let us call to mind a few principles, which throw light on this doctrine. Every sin causes a twofold injury to the sinner: it stains his soul, and renders him liable to punishment. Venial sin, which displeases God, requires a temporal expiation. Mortal sin deforms the soul, and makes the guilty man an abomination to God: its punishment cannot be anything less than eternal banishment, unless the sinner, in this life, prevent the final and irrevocable sentence. But even then the remission of the guilt, though it revokes the sentence of damnation, does not cancel the whole debt. Although an extraordinary overflow of grace upon the prodigal may sometimes, as is always the case with regard to baptism and martyrdom, bury every remnant and vestige of sin in the abyss of divine oblivion; yet it is the ordinary rule that for every fault, satisfaction must be made to God’s justice, either in this world or in the next’.

​​from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger OSB, 1805-1875

Help, Lord, the souls which Thou hast made,
The souls to Thee so dear,
In prison for the debt unpaid
Of sins committed here.

Those holy souls, they suffer on,
Resign’d in heart and will,
Until Thy high behest is done,
And justice has its fill.
 
For daily falls, for pardon’d crime,
They joy to undergo
The shadow of Thy cross sublime,
The remnant of Thy woe.

Help, Lord, the souls which Thou hast made,
The souls to Thee so dear,
In prison for the debt unpaid
Of sins committed here.

Oh, by their patience of delay,
Their hope amid their pain,
Their sacred zeal to burn away
Disfigurement and stain;
 
Oh, by their fire of love, not less
In keenness than the flame,
Oh, by their very helplessness,
Oh, by Thy own great Name,

Good Jesu, help! sweet Jesu, aid
The souls to Thee most dear,
In prison for the debt unpaid
Of sins committed here.

 St John Henry Newman, 1801-1890

‘This faith hath always not only faithful people had; but also, as we say, very miscreants and idolaters have ever had a certain opinion and persuasion of the same – whether that of the first light and revelation given of such things to our former fathers… there hath always remained a glimmering that hath gone forth from man to man, from one generation to another, and so continued and kept among all people… or else that nature and reason have taught men everywhere to perceive it. For surely that they have such belief… not only by such as have been travelled in many countries among sundry sects, but also by the old and ancient writers that have been among them, we may well and evidently perceive. And in good faith, if never had there been revelation given thereof, nor other light than reason: yet, presupposed the immortality of man’s soul, which no reasonable man distrusted; and thereto agreed the righteousness of God, and his goodness, which scant the devil himself denieth… purgatory must needs appear. For since that God, of his righteousness, will not leave sin unpunished; nor his goodness will perpetually punish the fault after the man’s conversion: it followeth that the punishment shall be temporal. And, now, since the man often dieth before such punishment had… either at God’s hand, by some affliction sent him, or at his own, by due penance done – which the most part of people wantonly doth forsloth – a very child, almost, may see the consequent: that the punishment at the death remaining due and undone… is to be endured and sustained after. Which… since his majesty is so excellent whom we have offended… cannot of right and justice be but heavy and sore’.

from ‘The Supplication of Souls’, 1529, ​by St Thomas More, 1478-1535

‘Today... we commemorate all of the faithful departed, who have “gone before us marked with the sign of faith and... who sleep in Christ”. It is very important that we Christians live a relationship of the truth of the faith with the deceased and that we view death and the afterlife in the light of Revelation. Already the Apostle Paul, writing to the first communities, exhorted the faithful to “not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since”, he wrote, “we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep”. Today too, it is necessary to evangelise about the reality of death and eternal life, realities particularly subject to superstitious beliefs and syncretisms, so that the Christian truth does not risk mixing itself with myths of various types.
 
In my Encyclical on Christian hope, I questioned myself about the mystery of eternal life. I asked myself: “Is the Christian faith a hope that transforms and sustains the lives of people still today?” And more radically: “Do men and women of our time still long for eternal life? Or has earthly existence perhaps become their only horizon?” In reality, as St Augustine had already observed, all of us want a “blessed life”, happiness. We rarely know what it is like or how it will be, but we feel attracted to it. This is a universal hope, common to men and women of all times and all places. The expression “eternal life” aims to give a name to this irrepressible longing; it is not an unending succession of days, but an immersion of oneself in the ocean of infinite love, in which time, before and after, no longer exists. A fulness of life and of joy: it is this that we hope and await from our being with Christ.
 
Today we renew the hope in eternal life, truly founded on Christ’s death and Resurrection. “I am risen and I am with you always”, the Lord tells us, and my hand supports you. Wherever you may fall, you will fall into my hands and I will be there even to the gates of death. Where no one can accompany you any longer and where you can take nothing with you, there I will wait for you to transform for you the darkness into light. Christian hope, however, is not solely individual, it is also always a hope for others. Our lives are profoundly linked, one to the other, and the good and the bad that each of us does always affects others too. Hence, the prayer of a pilgrim soul in the world can help another soul that is being purified after death. This is why the Church invites us today to pray for our beloved deceased and to pause at their tombs in the cemeteries. Mary, Star of Hope, renders our faith in eternal life stronger and more authentic, and supports our prayer of suffrage for our deceased brethren’.

Pope Benedict XVI

Lastly, let us remember before the Lord that multitude of which no man can number,
who in the hope of the resurrection have passed through the valley of the shadow of death;
and let us pray that the Lord may grant unto them his eternal light.

V. Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,
R. And may light perpetual shine upon them.

Into thy hands, O Lord, we commend the souls of the all the faithful departed,
as into the hands of a faithful Creator and most loving Saviour,
beseeching thee to grant unto them forgiveness and peace; Jesu, mercy.

Grant that all stain of sin may be done away,
and that in thy light they may see light; Jesu, mercy.

Grant unto them the renewing and enriching of thy gifts to them,
that with all their powers they may serve thee and thy kingdom; Jesu, mercy.

Grant to us, Lord, in our pilgrimage the help of their prayers; Jesu, mercy.

Grant to thy Church, Lord, the assurance of the communion of saints
and the joy of their fellowship: that they and we may be for ever one in thee; Jesu, mercy.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Our Father...

Now unto him that is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy; to the only wise God our Saviour
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

​from Cambridge Offices and Orisons, 1949
arranged by Eric Milner-White and BTD Smith

O day of life, of light, of love!
The only day dealt from above!
A day so fresh, so bright, so brave,
’Twill show us each forgotten grace,
And make the dead, like flowers, arise
Youthful and fair to see new skies.
All other days, compared to thee,
Are but Light’s weak minority;
They are but veils, and cypress drawn
Like clouds, before thy glorious dawn.
O come! arise! shine! do not stay,
Dearly lov’d day!
The fields are long since white, and I
With earnest groans for freedom cry;
My fellow-creatures too say “Come!”
And stones, though speechless, are not dumb.
When shall we hear that glorious voice
Of life and joys?
That voice, which to each secret bed
Of my Lord’s dead,
Shall being true day, and make dust see
The way to immortality?
When shall those first white pilgrims rise,
Whose holy, happy histories
– Because they sleep so long – some men
Count but the blots of a vain pen?
Dear Lord! make haste!
Sin every day commits more waste;
And Thy old enemy, which knows
His time is short, more raging grows.
Nor moan I only – though profuse –
Thy creature’s bondage and abuse;
But what is highest sin and shame,
The vile despite done to Thy name;
The forgeries, which impious wit
And power force on Holy Writ,
With all detestable designs,
That may dishonour those pure lines.
O God! though mercy be in Thee
The greatest attribute we see,
And the most needful for our sins;
Yet, when Thy mercy nothing wins
But mere disdain, let not man say
“Thy arm doth sleep”, but write this day
Thy judging one: descend, descend!
Make all things news, and without end!

Henry Vaughan, 1621-1695

‘Now the work of the Church is one. Through all the diversities of operations of the Divine Spirit, He is ever tending to the fulfilment of one purpose, the perfecting of the revelation of Christ in His new creation. And that work is in the unseen and spiritual world. The departed are withdrawn entirely from this world of sense, and are in that world only. We are in both worlds. Outwardly in the visible world, by the sacraments of Christ we are brought within the veil, where Christ is, and are called to share in the one life-work of His mystical Body. Those who are wholly within the veil have no sacraments, but the same Holy Spirit energises in them Who works in us through sacraments. And as in the natural body it is during repose that the processes of nutrition are most active, repairing and strengthening the wasted and worn tissues; and as for the fulld development of the human frame there are needed both the periods of outward activity in which there is wear and tear, and trial and strain and fatigue, and the periods of rest in which there is renewing and building up; so may it be in the spiritual life. We have the period of struggle and trial in this life, and of silent working—the secret fashioning and building up by the Spirit of God – in the unseen world. But there is this great difference between the natural and the spiritual life. The former is isolated in each individual bound up in his own personality; the latter is one in all he whole Catholic Church, and it is bound up with the Being of God and with the Person of Christ. “God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son”. The life, we repeat, is one in the one Body of Christ. No supernatural actions of members of that Body can be isolated, for they are actions of the one Life which is by the one Spirit of God. The souls of the departed are still His temples. His working in them and in us is not two separate things, but one. It is true the method and the condition of His working in us and in them are not the same. We are tempted, they are not. In us He works through sacraments, in them, since they are not in the flesh, without sacraments. But the powers of the spiritual life, which was begun in them through sacraments, are being developed and going on to perfection. And we, in offering the Holy Sacrifice, plead for them. The Church Militant, by drinking of the precious Blood of the Saviour, and thus renewing her strength, causes the pulses of that Life-blood to beat with increased force throughout the whole Mystical Body. We members of the Church on earth, by our prayers, are putting forth the spiritual force which is destined to do its part in accomplishing the eternal purpose of God: the Holy Spirit in us working both to will and to do of His good pleasure, guiding our wills to work in perfect accord with the will of God. For the one real force in the whole universe of God is will. This is the highest product of life. In the natural world we see the will of God creating, directing, upholding; and also the angelic wills co-operating with Him in part of that His work. In the spiritual world He calls us also, His human creatures, to take our part, to use our wills. There are two supreme actions of the spiritual world – worship and prayer, the one directed to God alone, without reference to the creatures; the other directed to God, but also having regard to the creatures. It is the Divine purpose that by prayer – i.e., the action of our wills in accord with the will of God – the purpose of God in the new creation should be accomplished. In this we all have our part: the souls of the Martyrs pleading beneath the heavenly Altar, each little Christian child learning to utter its first prayer, each band of devout worshippers at the Holy Sacrifice – all are putting forth spiritual energy, the power of their wills, for one end – “Thy Kingdom come.” And so each is working for all. When we say “Our Father,” we pray for all, for the faithful living and departed, that he would send His grace upon them to enable them to worship and serve and obey Him; we pray that He would give them all things needful for them, that they may obtain remission of all their sins, and find mercy of the Lord in that day. And the prayers of all are directed and inspired by the one Spirit, “Who helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered… because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God”’.

from a sermon preached in 1888 by John Wale Hicks, Vicar of St Mary the Less, Cambridge

‘[S]uch commemorations of the Faithful Departed, was the Church’s way of giving Glory to God, for His work of Grace, for His redeeming Love. For what are chants that rise up from noblest choirs, from exulting throngs of worshippers, that are even Eucharistic offerings of praise, compared with the bearing home to God of souls tried in the fire, disciplined in the battle, faithful found among the faithless - bearing them home to be witnesses throughout Eternity of the power of the Spirit, Who has sanctified them? And what offering of sweeter savour, could be given to God than the constant recalling of the names, the records of those, who having endured to the end have overcome, as He overcame in Whom they have borne bravely the conflict with evil?

But a yet deeper call, and quickened sense of intercommunion between the living and the Departed, yet has to be kept in mind. We cannot now fully understand how, or how far the dead in Christ know what passes on earth, whether it be that, as some suppose, they know by some direct means of intuition, or, as others think, by seeing what passes here being glassed in their vision of God - while yet whatever is thus seen must be tempered, so that what would trouble their peace must be hidden from their eyes - whatever would distract their loving gaze on God must be withheld - or there would not be really “rest from their labours”. But to suppose that change of state would change their interests, change their fellow-feeling  - change their desires towards their fellows still struggling on earth - this would seem inconceivable. And if it be so, then in a world where worship and a sense of dependence on God, must possess every soul to a degree of which we can form no adequate conception, we cannot doubt that their intercessions ever rise for us in constant prayer - tender, and true, and fervent, - that they who know our needs, our weaknesses, by their own long experience of like trials, cannot but pray, however they may have failed on earth to pray for others’.
​
Canon TT Carter, 1808-1901

​‘The manner in which people regard death relates a great deal about how they evaluate life. To many today the elevation of humanity and its needs above the ancient notion that life exists for higher purposes than our welfare, has reached a point where death itself seems a kind of blasphemy. We exalt ourselves so thoroughly that we cannot conceive of an order of things in which our desires are not sovereign. Translated beyond the grave this means that those who believe in survival after death – probably a large majority – reject the idea that, in a future state, they will experience anything but uninterrupted bliss. When life is considered as the endless pursuit of happiness, and the indulgences of pleasure are imagined to be the greatest good, it is scarcely surprising that a serene eternal life should be claimed as a normal extension of worldly existence. Modern people are universalists. In their picture of the afterlife there is happiness all round, no judgement, and limitless continuation of familiar human relationships. Few see a connection between belief and survival; seemingly any religious opinions are acceptable to God. More, doubtlessly, see a connection between good moral behaviour and survival, but it is always other people’s behaviour, rather than their own, which merits eternal condemnation. Death is regarded as a potentially minor interruption to the pursuit of happiness, no longer linked to judgement. The moral culture which no longer allows discrimination between ethnic groups, different cultures, personal lifestyles, sexual habits, or even religious belief, does not, equally, discriminate between those who have attempted a disciplined spirituality and those who have not. After death, we seem to be saying, it is eternal happiness all round.
 
This actually raises fearful problems for the priest attending a death. His traditional duty was to remind the dying person of the need for repentance, to assist an act of contrition, and to warn about the certainty of God’s judgement. Such a duty, performed today, would be considered enormously insensitive by the relatives. Death has to be sanitised; everyone has to be assured that they will receive everlasting blessedness. Do modern people really think that? Do they really think so highly of themselves that they believe they deserve to exist forever? Apparently so; it is no longer acceptable for a priest to remind the dying that they stand in urgent need of God’s mercy, but only, instead, to utter bland words of reassurance. The terrors of death remain, however, and the sugared attempts to disguise the horrific fact of universal judgement sound unconvincing even as they are being made. For life has a purpose. That purpose is the service of God. We all do it badly, but to think that we are entitled to exemption from judgement, however we have used our time in the world, is simple folly’.

Dr Edward Norman
Canon Chancellor of York Minster, 1999-2004
​now a layman in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

Remembrance Sunday this year marks the centenary of the Armistice on 11 November 1918, which brought to an end the Great War. The following photographs were taken at the war memorial in the village of Hollingworth, Cheshire, on the edge of the Peak District, in the week leading up to today's commemoration. We give thanks to Almighty God for all those who, in war and conflict, fought for their nation, their monarch, for freedom and liberty, and for a better tomorrow for their sons and daughters. May their memory not fade, nor their example be lost on us in the midst of the comfort and complacency of our time. And we pray, too, especially, for the repose of the souls of all the Faithful Departed who fell in battle. Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them. May they rest in peace. 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
 
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
 
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
 
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
 
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
 
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
 
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon CH, 1869-1943

​‘We fear to leave this world because our nature is so befogged by sin that we cannot see the eternal glories to which we are called.
 
Contemplate death as the call of God, calling thee that thou behold himself. At death the Word of God will speak through thy being no new call; the call will be only the carrying-out of that voice which has been speaking within thee throughout thy life. The soul was not intended merely to animate the body for a few years, but to prepare the body for eternal life.
 
Meditate, then, upon the call of God in death. The soul which during the life has felt within itself an emptiness, condemning itself because it came so short of the divine will, yet sustained by faith in the divine love which still was calling it, - that soul find in this final call of God an intensity of delight, the sweetness of the divine manifestation.
 
Are we prepared to die? Is our life a real preparation for death? Consider that it is still possible for thee to die the death of a saint. It is still possible for thee to attain to this glory of God. Think not with thyself what thou hast been in the past, but realise the attraction of this heavenly light shining upon thee. There is the voice of impulse from within, and there is the voice of welcome from the other side of the grave. There is the illumination of the image of God within, and there is the glory of Him for whom thou prepares beyond the grave. Thou art indeed to be encouraged, thou art not to despair’.
 
Richard Meux Benson SSJE, 1824-1915