Dies Irae - Day of Wrath - Notre Dame

Dies Irae - Day of Wrath – Day of Judgment

At Notre Dame, belief in the sanctity of life, a Sacred, a genuine heartfelt belief by many, would seem by the very nature of the modern age to has been corrupted, co-mingled, marshaled to champion politics, the Profane.

More so than the death of innocents through abortion is the death of Civility in the American Town Square, once real and now virtual. It would seem that there is a culture of death of sorts on both sides of this matter.

Dies Irae as a hymn is part of the ancient pre-Vatican II Mass for the dead.

On these matters that I would prefer not to touch with a ten foot pole, I turn to art, music, poetry...



I choose this very modern poetic translation of Dies Irae from the very dead language of Latin.

The day of wrath, that day
which will reduce the world to ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sybil.

What terror there will be,
when the Lord will come
to judge all rigorously!

The trumpet, scattering a wondrous sound
among the graves of all the lands,
will assemble all before the Throne.

Death and Nature will be astounded
when they see a creature rise again
to answer to the Judge.

The book will be brought forth
in which all deeds are noted,
for which humanity will answer.

When the judge will be seated,
all that is hidden will appear,
and nothing will go unpunished.

Alas, what will I then say?
To what advocate shall I appeal,
when even the just tremble?

O king of redoutable majesty,
who freely saves the elect,
save me, o fount of piety!

Remember, merciful Jesus,
that I am the cause of your journey,
do not lose me on that day.

You wearied yourself in finding me.
You have redeemed me through the cross.
Let not such great efforts be in vain.

O judge of vengeance, justly
make a gift of your forgiveness
before the day of reckoning.

I lament like a guilty one.
My faults cause me to blush,
I beg you, spare me.

You who have absolved Mary,
and have heard the thief's prayer,
have also given me hope.

My prayers are not worthy,
but you, o Good One, please grant freely
that I do not burn in the eternal fire.

Give me a place among the sheep,
separate me from the goats
by placing me at your right.

Having destroyed the accursed,
condemned them to the fierce flames,
Count me among the blessed.

I prostrate myself, supplicating,
my heart in ashes, repentant;
take good care of my last moment!

That tearful day,
when from the ashes shall rise again
sinful man to be judged.

Therefore pardon him, o God.
Merciful Lord Jesus,
give them rest.

Amen.

(http://www.globalserve.net/~bumblebee/diesirae.html )

The Sacred and the Secular

There is that standard term ”the sacred and the profane”. Sacred of course means the church. Everything else is the profane.

The term is no doubt centuries old and goes back to when the church was equal to or greater than the local civil authority or king. The aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire left many gaps and many niche opportunities for those willing to fill those gaps. Many of the basic civil institutions of western and European countries started first as church entities.

Profane as a word or description has picked up much too much negative connotation over these recent centuries.

For the sake of anything you might read here, I am using or will be using the word secular in place of the word profane, to mean the common man or woman’s world outside of any religious organizations.

Secular of course and of late has a nasty connotation especially in conjunction with the use of the word humanism. That is another article.

I live in a secular world. The USA is a market economy and goes non stop 24/7, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week in case you have never seen or totally understood that new cliché of communication.

So many things culturally are changing today. The fast pace of life has taken over the way we live in this secular world.

As a child, and half a century ago, my local neighborhood was immersed in the traditional nineteenth and early twentieth century predominate Christian culture. That meant that six days per week commerce was conducted. On Sunday, the Sabbath, stores did not open. The origin of the term “blue laws” in Pennsylvania applied to moral conduct codes and legislated by the state assembly.

Open a store on Sunday and get fined or arrested. In our neighborhood that was true but we played a little bit of a local variance of the law thing. Since orthodox Jews were closed on Saturday, their Sabbath, these grocers opened their stores from nine A.M. to one P.M. on Sunday and sold mostly milk and bread. My father would be buying milk on the way home from church from the Jewish Deli for my baby sister.

Over the years in larger urban centers, these local blue laws began to be ignored or legislated out of existence.

The stage was set for supermarkets and malls to do business seven days a week.

This commerce thing did not immediately weaken the religious thing. The tradition of not shopping on Sunday or keeping a quiet stay at home Sabbath lingered on depending on local regions.

Speaking to somebody recently who grew up in rural Georgia, the collapse of the no shopping on Sunday tradition budged a little when the local K-Mart opened from 12 to 4 on Sundays in the early eighties.

All this coincided with the expanding suburban mall culture, with the local indoor fountain area or food court in the local mall becoming the equivalent of the traditional American town square.

Many factors pulled the American culture away from the traditional sacred culture of the past.

Secularism did not happen as some evil satanic campaign to rob the sacredness from Sunday. It just happened.

So when I hear the strong political voice of American evangelicalism and their faint hope to go back to some sort of rural farm sacred Sunday kind of place, I have to concede that the dream sounds great. Shut down the Malls, our new 21st Century Cathedrals of Commerce on Sunday? I don’t think so.

It is a secular world and we are very much a part of it.