"Pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray."
My girlfriend's grandmother died last night, and I have been praying for her soul. We are called to pray for the dead in general, for they cannot pray for themselves once they have passed, and we usually especially pray for those who are close to us. One way I pray for the souls of the faithful departed is by listening to a musical setting of a Requiem Mass, the beautiful prayers of the Church for all her departed children. While listening, I pray for the recently deceased (I often do this whenever someone I know dies). While I have a soft spot in my heart for the works of the famous Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, the setting I usually pray with is the setting by the famous Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi. Though Verdi was an atheist, he felt inspired by the sacred prayers of the Church found in the Requiem Mass, and his recently-deceased friend Alessandro Manzoni (a poet and novelist famous for The Betrothed ) was Catholic, so he felt inspired to compos...