Time and Eternity - Dies Irae

Preces meæ non sunt dignæ;

Sed tu bonus fac benigne,

Ne perenni cremer igne.

Worthless are my prayers and sighing,

Yet, good Lord, in grace complying,

Rescue me from fires undying.

On this All Soul's Day, I was struck by a childhood memory or maybe not, which is just that and perhaps nothing. 

The sequence from pre-Council days with which I was most familiar was the Dies Irae  from singing in the grade school choir at parish funerals and although I found it the most difficult piece of the Requiem to sing as a child I never found it long or tedious. The novus ordo relegates this sequence to a hymn option for the divine office and it is no longer an obligatory (or for that matter optional) part of the first Mass of All Soul's.

Don't mind me! It must be just a nostalgia attack. How could things have been so right, righter than now, that they had to be abolished? It doesn't make a bit of sense, now, does it?

REQUIEM AETERNAM DONA EIS, DOMINE, 

ET LUX PERPETUA LUCEAT EIS.