08 January 2009

+ Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

Asleep in Jesus.

Rest eternal grant him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.

6 comments:

Wes Thorp said...

Pastor Weedon--
Thank-you for sharing your prayer for Father Neuhaus. Please help me understand though, are you praying for the dead with this prayer? Such prayers have been a topic of discussion around our dinner table in the recent days. When do such prayers cross the boundaries set by the Bible in who we should pray for? I would appreciate your input.

Wes Thorp

William Weedon said...

Dear Wes,

Yes, it is a prayer for the dead. I'd encourage you to check out this portion of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession:

XXIV:94-96.

Here's a prayer for the dead from the classic Lutheran prayer book by Starck:

O holy and righteous God, it has pleased You to call from this life the departed [lying here before us] by temporal death. Let us learn from this death that we, too, must die and leave this world, in order that we may prepare for it in time by repentance, a living faith, and avoiding the sins and vanities of the world. Refresh the soul that has now departed with heavenly consolation and joy, and fulfill for it all the gracious promises which in Your holy Word You have made to those who believe in You. Grant to the body a soft and quiet rest in the earth till the Last Day, when You will reunite body and soul and lead them into glory, so that the entire person who served You here may be filled with heavenly joy there. Comfort all who are in grief over this death, and be and remain to the bereaved their Father, Provider, Guardian, Helper, and Support. Do not forsake them, and do not withdraw Your hand from them, but let them abundantly experience Your goodness, grace, love, and help, until You will grant them also a happy and blessed end. Hear us for Your mercy’s sake. Amen.

Also note that the Funeral Liturgy in LSB begins the intercessions with a prayer that God would give "to Your whole Church *in heaven and on earth* Your light and Your peace."

Past Elder said...

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

Even I -- who thought little of his conversion and thinks even less of that to which he converted -- would not begrudge him this ancient prayer of the church, expressing for those who have gone on the hope we all share, a light in which, among other things and to paraphrase Melanchthon slightly, we'll wonder what all our fussing was about while we were here.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Pastor Weedon and Terry, for your kindness.

May the Light that never fades shine upon Father Nehaus and upon us all.

Schütz said...

Yes, I think today is a day of mourning for all Lutherans and Catholics who, like Fr Neuhaus, longed and prayed for the re-unification of our two communions.

Regarding prayer for the dead, I am always mindful of St Peter's exhortation (1 Pet 5:7) to "Cast all your anxieties on God, for he cares about you." Since the wellbeing of our loved ones who have died is certainly "a great anxiety" for many, it makes sense that prayer in such a case does not "cross the boundaries set by the Bible in who we should pray for". I cannot think that God would in any sense set up any boundaries concerning for whom we may or not pray. I certainly know of no such biblical boundaries.

Luther also taught that our prayers are based upon our certainty of the goodness of God. The prayer such as you expressed in this entry, Pastor, is a confession of the goodness and graciousness of our God to all, living or dead.

Past Elder said...

I wish you guys knew the chant for the Requiem prayer. I can hear it clear as fifty years ago when we kids did it at every funeral.

Only five notes in the whole thing. The simple, serene and restful incipit. Then all joining in an auskomponierung to the third for aeternam, then the composing out to the fifth of the prayer that this be the gift of God to the departed, then the mirror not ascending as our request but descending from higher on lux perpetua, then the melismatic flourish for the verb luceat, yet peacefully ending on the pronoun for the departed.

What an absolute miracle of compositional construction, the more you know how that is, the more shattering the chant is, musically and otherwise.