“Welcome Them into the Light of Your Face”

The Prayer of the Church for the Deceased

Abstract

The contribution considers the obsequial prayers of suffrage of the Missals and Rites in current use in the Roman and Ambrosian liturgies, highlighting some recurring themes: the participation of the deceased in the resurrection of Christ, the separation of body and soul and/or the unity of the person, the relation between judgment after death and final judgment, the value of the eucharistic  celebration concerning the forgiveness of sins. The lex orandi of the Church is placed at the beginning of a theological reflection which intends to answer, as far as possible, the numerous questions raised by those realities which classical doctrine defines as the “novissimi”.