Annual Requiem Mass
During November, the whole Church prays especially for the Faithful Departed, our brothers and sisters who have died in Christ and who now wait and prepare for the final resurrection in Purgatory. On 12 November, the annual Requiem Mass for deceased Members and benefactors of our Order was celebrated at Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory, Warwick Street. Fr Edmund Montgomery, Magistral Chaplain, celebrated the Mass and preached the sermon which we reproduce below.
Of your charity, please pray for the souls of those of our confrères in Britain who have died in the last year:
Dr Jonathan Turner + 8 October 2024
Peter McCann of Castle Craig + 5 March 2024
Rory More O’ Ferrall + 14 May 2024
Miss Ann Bate + 9 June 2024
Peter de Vere Beauclerk-Dewar + 1 August 2024
John Henry Orlando Bridgeman + 2 April 2024
Dom Edward Courbold OSB + 6 November 2024
Please also pray for all deceased Members, friends, and benefactors of the Order; those of Our Lords the Sick and the Poor who have died; and all the Faithful Departed who have no-one to pray for them.
HOMILY FOR THE ANNUAL REQUIEM FOR THE ORDER OF MALTA
Tonight, we, the living, pray for the dead. And yet, some of those who prayed at this Mass last November are now numbered among the ones for whom this Mass is offered. And in a year’s time, in November 2025, there are some here – perhaps even myself – who will not be here next November and will be remembered in prayer among all the faithful departed. The starkness of that reality of the brevity and fragility of life and the certainty of your death and mine ought to make us sit up, take a breath, and examine our lives.
St Alphonsus Liguori, one of my favourite saints, in his excellent but understandably not most popular work due to its title: Preparation for Death is a book I return to frequently, especially whenever I am ill. This is not because I am given to histrionics or melodrama, nor do I have my coffin picked out and my ledger stone engraved at the ready at the slightest sniffle, rather this seminal evangelical treatise invites the reader to consider seriously that they will die. The book opens, Preparation for Death: Dear Reader, who knows if you will live to read the end of this book? Who knows, dear Reader, if I should live to write the end of this book?
In a powerful chapter, St Alphonsus asks us to imagine our death not at some distant point in the future but now. In this moment. You are dead. And he asks us to consider: would we be ready to die, right now. I am certain that Father Elliott-Smith’s stewardship will mean the ceiling will not suddenly fall in nor the floor suddenly give way, nevertheless, indulge this thought. That lying in the coffin on the catafalque is our own body. And St Alphonsus presses us, he says to paraphrase: And now you are dead consider: what sins are left unconfessed, relationships unhealed, prayers unsaid, forgiveness unsought, reconciliation now impossible. And, he continues, allow the full weight and impact of the reality of your death at this moment to overwhelm your heart knowing that after death comes judgement, as the Apostle Paul writes.
And yet.
With joy that leaps off the page, St Alphonsus says, But, dear Reader, you are not dead. And all that which you were moments ago so sorrowful that you had not done, said, prayed, confessed you can now do. And do quickly, whilst life is still in you.
The offering of a Requiem Mass is meant to jolt us out of our complacency and to consider the reality of our own mortality – a Requiem Mass is both a dress rehearsal for your Requiem and mine but also a merciful and serious reminder that on a day, known only to God – and only by His Prerogative despite the legislative proposals before Parliament – our life will end and our eternity will begin. The only assisted dying a faithful Catholic can imagine or countenance is the assistance of the Last Sacraments and the anointings and absolutions that accompany them.
My dear brothers and sisters, heed the kindness of God today that our eternities may be spent together happily in Heaven. Let us turn back to Him Who is full of mercy and love for us and does not desire that any be lost.
Tonight, as we remember in prayer – and throughout this month of November – prayers for all the faithful departed, remembering especially the members of our Order, and not least our beloved confrere and late Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing on his anniversary, let us be mindful above all of the certainty of our own mortality and that the charity we lavish on the faithful departed today, may well be the prayers that we need for ourselves tomorrow.
Fr Edmund Montgomery