Yesterday drove down to Miami for a Requiem Mass at Trinity Cathedral that lasted two hours. You would have thought it was Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s. At one point the bishop read a list of names; at the G’s I got up and walked to the back to talk to Toby, who was ushering.
“Who are all these people?” I asked. During the morning service, the number of sick people we are asked to pray for sometimes exceeds the number of people in the pews, but this list seemed endless.
“I think,” said Toby, “they're all the people who died in Florida in the last 25 years.”
The music, Maurice Durufle’s Requiem sung by the Anglican chorale, was gorgeous, and I did walk away with a line I hadn’t heard before. The bishop, in his sermon, spoke of the man who wished for a blessing that wasn’t in disguise.
