The Song of Sorrow. By Maestro Aurelio Porfiri
We cannot feign indifference in the face of the most significant transition in our existence, the one on which we have in keeping with Pascal bet for a future life. Blaise Pascal said in his Thoughts: "Men, not having been able to remedy death, misery and ignorance, have resolved, in order to live happily, not to think about it". (98). He added: "We run without a thought towards the precipice, after having put something in front of our eyes that prevents us from seeing it" (108).
The Church celebrated these sombre liturgies with the melodies of the Gregorian Requiem Mass. The introit had something sad but at the same time serene, as if it wanted to admonish and at the same time console.
It would be terrible to assume an imbalance between the two dimensions, a Church that admonishes or consoles too excessively. Traditional wisdom knew how to reconcile the two dimensions, which were well reflected in the essential Kyrie.
The invocations for the eternal repose of the soul and for the absolution of the faithful departed followed when the liturgy reached the beautiful medieval sequence Dies irae, rich in vivid images which presents the terrible and wonderful moment of death, and prefigures the final judgement:
“Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets' warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!
Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth,
When from heaven the Judge descendeth,
On whose sentence all dependeth.”
The prayers with songs and melodies that were at times essential and at times more flowery, continued until communion, when eternal light was invoked on the dead and it was hoped that they would be able to rest with the other saints in God's eternity.
It was all, as I said, sad but also consoling, the strength of faith made up for the pain that certainly cannot be avoided if we want to remain human beings.
Today we have got rid of all this. It is considered superfluous, unnecessary. Nowadays, many priests always speak well of the dead, so much so that at certain funerals I thought I was in the wrong church. The priest should not speak about the dead, but the Word of God should speak to us of Christian hope in eternal life through that ceremony.
The relatives can add something at the end about the defunct person, just to charge even more the emotional atmosphere which is already very intense.
However, it must be said for our “consolation,” that in the New Liturgy at the end everything resolves with a round of applause as the coffin is taken out. This is a fitting tribute to our lives which are transformed by a worldly Church into an easy pretext for turning them into a long reality show.
