Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Just for kicks

Rich went on a macabre bent and diagnosed his wishes for his funeral.  (by the way, this is a good idea to do, you never know when He's gonna call, afterall.)

Fr. Fox's comment (number 10) brought up a memory for me from my grandfather's funeral now two weeks ago.  Fr. Fox wrote: 

A little known fact: the Archbishop has specified the In Paradisum to be sung at all priest's funerals; perhaps he has simply make it clear he wants it, without making it a "mandate"; but it was sung at Fr. Schuh's funeral. It is properly sung, I believe, as the deceased's remains are borne from the church.

Sometimes it is sung as the remains are incensed, which may be allowed (who knows anymore?), but another prayer, "Saints of God, come to his aid" is normal there, too bad not to have both.

FYI, if you have even a small number of competent singers as a choir, a chant such as In Paradisum works very well (hint, get a group together and offer such services in your parish). I know a parish priest who sings it himself.


At the end of the Visitation, grandma wanted the family to say a decade of the rosary together, as they used to say it as the children (my mom's generation) were all little.  Well, guess who lead it, perk of having a priest in the family, I guess.

Thinking that we are a Catholic family, I started the Fatima tune at the end of the decade.  What I intended to be a chorus ended up to be mostly a solo.

I was fine with it, just unexpected.

1 comment:

Adoro said...

I was thinking about this recently, too, although more about my Mom's funeral. She's already written out her wishes, but there are bigger ones I'm concerned about: such as the canonization at the end that I refuse to participate in and will discourage, and the fact that, given the church where the funeral will be held, well....at the last family funeral the priest invited non-Catholic family members up for Holy Communion! If they want to see Mom spin BEFORE she gets to her grave, that'll happen!

And death must be in the air for some reason. I got word today that a friend's cousin passed away very quickly. It's on my blog.

:-(