Hugh Michael O’Brien IV

The pattern is different from what you may be used to. Follow the people around you — no one is keeping score, and no one will think less of you for staying seated.

From the Sanctus until the Pater Noster the priest prays the Canon almost inaudibly. That stretch of quiet is not a pause. It is the most solemn part of the Mass, and the best moment you will have this evening to pray for Hugh Michael in your own words.

Communion is received kneeling at the altar rail and on the tongue. It is for Catholics who are prepared to receive it. Everyone else — and you are genuinely welcome here — is asked simply to remain in the pew and pray. Coming forward with arms crossed for a blessing is not the custom in this rite, so please don’t feel you are expected to.

Many of the women present will wear a veil. It is a custom, not a requirement, and its absence will not be noticed.

Please, none during the Mass.

Prayed at the door of the church as the priest receives the body, with the antiphon Si iniquitates observaveris: If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities. Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord. The Church does not open in consolation. She begins at the bottom, begging the Lord for forgiveness on behalf of the faithful departed. Then turns to acknowledge the Lord’s mercy: with Thee there is merciful forgiveness. The psalm’s penitential use is early Christian. It’s one of the seven Penitential Psalms, used in the East and the West, by the early Christians. It’s also one of the fifteen Gradual Psalms sung by Jewish pilgrims going up to Jerusalem, so it was already ancient when the Church received it.

Sung during the procession. The antiphon is Exsultabunt Domino ossa humiliata: the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice. One of the seven Penitential Psalms, prayed as such by Christians in the East and the West from the early centuries, and David’s own repentance after Nathan came to him. Of the psalm’s twenty-one verses, the Church chose the tenth — the only one that mentions bones — and sings it over a body being carried to burial. The humbling is death; the rejoicing is the resurrection of the body. So the procession is penitence in the psalm and hope in the antiphon, at the same moment.

The priest meets the coffin at the door of the church as the Subvenite is chanted, calling on the whole company of heaven to come out to meet him and carry him home: Come to his aid, saints of God; hasten to meet him, angels of the Lord. A pall is laid over the coffin, and he is carried in and set down before the sanctuary, his feet toward the altar.

The Introit, from the Latin introitus, a going-in, is the chant sung as the priest approaches the altar. At a Requiem its first words are Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine — eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord — which is how this Mass got its name. The Gloria Patri, sung at every other Mass of the year, is omitted.

While the choir sings, the priest and servers stop at the foot of the altar and pray there in a low voice. At a Requiem this opening is much shortened: Psalm 42, Judica me, is omitted, as it is throughout Passiontide, because it opens in gladness. What remains is the confession. The priest says the Confiteor, and the servers say it after him, each striking his breast at mea culpa — through my fault. It is said before anything at all is asked for the dead: the men in the sanctuary ask pardon for themselves first, and only then go up to the altar to plead for Hugh Michael.

Kyrie eleison, Greek for “Lord, have mercy,” is the oldest prayer in the Mass and the only Greek that survives in a rite otherwise entirely Latin. Christians were singing it by the fourth century, and at Rome by the fifth. Nine times it is asked — three to the Father, three to the Son, three to the Spirit.

The Collect, pronounced col-lect, takes its name from what it does — the priest collects the silent prayers of everyone present into one. Listen for the invitation to pray, then a moment of silence in which to offer your own intention, then the single prayer spoken for all. It is here that Hugh Michael is first named at the altar, in Latin, as he was named at his baptism.

St. Paul writes to a congregation frightened about their dead, and tells them not to grieve as men without hope.

Sung from the step of the altar — gradus, a step. The plea for rest again, with a line of quiet confidence: the just man is held in everlasting remembrance.

Where the Alleluia would normally be sung, the Requiem sings a Tract instead: Absolve, Domine — “Absolve, O Lord.” The Church will not sing Alleluia over a coffin. Sung in the Roman Mass for the Dead for close to a thousand years, it is a plea for forgiveness: “Absolve, O Lord, the souls of all the faithful departed from every bond of sin.”

Dies iræ, dies illa — day of wrath, that day. Nineteen rhyming stanzas on the Last Judgment, written in the thirteenth century and commonly attributed to the Franciscan Thomas of Celano, who knew St. Francis. It is the longest chant of the morning. Listen for the turn: halfway through it stops describing the judgment and begins to plead, and it ends almost in a whisper — Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest.

Martha tells Christ He has come too late. He answers: I am the resurrection and the life. The Gospel is not carried with candles, as it would be on a Sunday; the servers take their places beside the book with empty hands, and there is no incense. Even the ceremonies are in mourning.

A prayer that St. Michael bring the soul into holy light — the same promise once made to Abraham. While it is sung the priest offers the bread and the chalice in a series of quiet prayers, washes his hands at the Lavabo, and turns once to ask that his sacrifice and yours be acceptable to God. Incense returns here for the first time this evening, and the drop of water mixed into the wine goes in unblessed — at every other Mass it would be blessed first.

The heart of the rite: in Christ, life is changed, not taken away — vita mutatur, non tollitur.

Holy, holy, holy. The song of the angels, joined by everyone in the building. Kneel at its end.

Prayed silently, in a voice the congregation is not meant to hear. This is what makes the Mass a Mass. Over the bread and the wine the priest speaks the words of Christ, and what lies on the altar is no longer bread and wine: the whole substance is changed, the appearances alone remaining, and Jesus Christ is present — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, the whole Christ, truly, really and substantially. The Council of Trent gave the change its name: transubstantiation. He genuflects, raises the Host, and then the chalice, for you to adore. Later in the same prayer he pauses, and names Hugh Michael before God — not in passing, and not at the edge of the morning, but here, with Christ present upon the altar. This is the Church’s love for him: she waits until she holds her Lord in her hands, and then she asks.

The Our Father, sung by the priest alone. Forgive us our trespasses — asked here for someone who can no longer ask it himself.

Listen for the change. At every other Mass the response is have mercy on us. Here it is grant them rest — and the third time, rest everlasting.

May everlasting light shine upon him, with Thy saints forever. Sung while the faithful receive.

In place of Ite, missa est. The dismissal is not “go” but “may they rest in peace.” There is no final blessing.

('Their children', 'Mikey (Ashley), Marisa (Noah), and Maria')

('His mother', 'Julie Apelo O’Brien')

('His siblings', 'Tara, Tim, Sammi Jo, and Kimberly')