Day of Wrath

Appropriate to today – the Feast of All Souls of the Benedictine Order – we once again have the Dies Iræ, the traditional sequence for Requiem Masses and the Masses of All Souls.

Today we pray for the souls of all Benedictine monks, nuns, sisters, and oblates in purgatory.

Servant of God Thomas of Celano

Most probably written by Servant of God Thomas of Celano near the middle of the 13th century, there have been more than three hundred different English translations. So pervasive is the tune, that it has found it’s way into movie soundtracks from It’s a Wonderful Life to The Lord of the Rings.

In his masterwork, The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal, Dom Matthew Britt praised the hymn’s “exquisite beauty”. Indeed, he spends nearly twenty pages exploring its poetry and wealth of scriptural allusions, constantly speaking of the impossibility of translating it completely faithfully.

Britt calls it “the greatest of all hymns”, and I for one bow to his wisdom.