Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen.
Full of sorrows will be that day
When from the dust and ashes rise
Those who will be judged.
Have pity on them, God,
O merciful Lord Jesus,
And grant them rest. Amen.
“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life.
But now we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism
"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; but they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them.
They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a beautiful woman’s throat."
Léon Bloy
"Even the holy Name of God is being dragged into discourses of death. A world with one heavenly Father vanishes, as in a nightmare. We are met by threats, rather than the invitation to listen and come together. Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death. Death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the God, turning themselves and their power into an idol to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the world bends its knee." Leo XIV
