For the Month of the Holy Souls

I propose to work slowly through the Dies Iræ in the mornings of this month, with a very short meditation on each verse . . . just as a slight change from my usual vapid wanderings !

Dies iræ ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla !

Day of wrath and doom impending,
David’s word with Sybil’s blending !
Heaven and earth in ashes ending.

The beginning of the Sequence focuses our minds on the fact that death brings a clear change : an end of one period of existence, and the start of another in which there is nothing left to focus upon except the inevitability of retribution for sin, and resolution of our shortcomings before we may be possibly be admitted to Heaven.