Requiem at St Benet's Hall

Last Saturday morning I attended the High Mass of Requiem for deceased members of St Benet's Hall here in Oxford and at which Fr Edward Vandenbergh from the London Oratory was the celebrant.

Dr Joe Shaw, a former student at the Hall and a tutor there, has some good photographs and a report on his LMS Chairman blog, and which I have quoted and adapted, with a few additions of my own, as follows:

Dr Shaw says "Every Catholic institution should pray for those who once collaborated in its work and have go to their rewards. The Requiem Mass of the Extraordinary Form is a particularly beautiful and theologically rich expression of the Church's concern for the dead. This is the third annual Requiem I have organised there."

"St Benet's chapel is small; with just over 30 people present, it felt pretty crowded. We managed, all the same, to have a High Mass of Requiem there; one of the student monks studying at the Hall (which is the Benedictine house of studies in Oxford) was deacon."

"We can be confident that this is the first High Mass in the chapel since 1970. I wonder if they had High Mass there often in the old days; it would at least have been easier, with the Altar in the apse, and not sticking out into the nave, where the footpace (a temporary one brought in for the purpose) is in danger of impeding the passageway to the sacristy."

"Another first for this Mass in St Benet's was that the fire alarm did not go off. The precautions we took - turning off selected smoke detectors, keeping the sacristy door into the garden open, etc. - paid off."

This problem I recall from two years ago when I was serving as the thurifer - indeed it is painfully etched on my memory!

The Absolutions at the cataphalque. A smaller, symbolic, catafalque was used this year so as to leave more space for the Sacred Ministers. 

So, as Dr Shaw says, bells and smells, but, happily, not fire bells.

Requiem at St Benet's

I was asked last week by the organiser if I would be willing to be thurifer at an EF Requiem Mass for old members of St Benet's Hall here in Oxford which was planned for this morning. I was happy to help and spent the morning doing so.

We began by meeting at the Oxford Oratory at 9.20 to borrow various pieces of necessary paraphanalia, including four catafalque candlesticks and a thurible, and loading them into his people carrier, along with a moveable footplate for the altar and a table to act as the catafalque which he had brought with him. The short journey to St Benet's accomplished we unloaded this improvised tatmobile and began setting up the simple chapel at the Hall for the Requiem, whilst the schola rehearsed.
Once covered with a black pall and flanked by the candlesticks the otherwise ordinary table made an excellent catafalque.

I then realised we had left the communion plate behind at the Oratory, so I had to change out of my cassock and hurry back to collect that, return down St Giles street, get back into St Benet's - I did not, of course, know the door code - and get back into my cassock and sort out with the other servers who had now arrived who was doing what. We were fortunate in our MC, a brother of the London Oratory, who had travelled up to Oxford with the celebrant, Fr Edward van den Bergh, Cong. Orat., who is himself an old member of the Hall.

The Mass went well until, during the prayers following the Canon the thurible, now safely back in the sacristy, set off the smoke alarm none of us had realised was there...I decided that others knew what to do to overide it and, like a well conducted person, went on calmly saying my prayers.

We retrieved the offending thurible for the absolutions and managed that well in the small amount of space the chapel afforded us.

Afterwards we packed up all our borrowings and returned them by road to the Oratory, making sure we had neither lost nor damaged anything, before joining the celebrant, MC and singers for a convivial lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, which was generously provided for us all.

Despite the need to transport things to and fro and the irritant of the smoke alarm this was dignified occasion, a prayerful intercession for the departed. I gather it is hoped to make it an annual occasion.