All Saints Sunday Requiem Eucharist, Nov. 3

Posted by: Melissa Hayes October 28, 2019 Community, Get Involved, Music, Uncategorized

We celebrate the truth that this community,
what we call the communion of saints,
is stronger than death.

Sunday, November 3
7:30 a.m. (Chapel)
9 & 11:15 a.m. Requiem Eucharist
1:00 p.m. Bilingual Spanish/English Eucharist
Mike Kinman will preach.

All Saints Sunday, is our parish feast day when we traditionally honor all who have died — those great martyrs of history who gave their lives to defend their faith in the risen Christ, as well as those we have personally known and loved, whom we hold close to our hearts and minds, especially those who are victims of cruelty, war and violence.

At all services our memorial book, containing the names of loved ones will be placed on the altar. You are invited to look in the memorial book for the name of the person you love.

At 9 & 11:15 a.m. Coventry Choir and Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Weicheng Zhao, will offer Requiem for the Living by Dan Forrest, a work of remarkable beauty and power.

The five movements of Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living, (2013), form a narrative just as much for the living, and their own struggle with pain and sorrow, as for the dead. The opening movement sets the traditional Introit and Kyrie texts- pleas for rest and mercy. The second movement, instead of the traditional Dies Irae, sets Scriptural texts that speak of the turmoil and sorrow which face humanity, while yet invoking musical and textual allusions to the Dies Irae.

The Sanctus offers three different glimpses of the “heavens and earth, full of Thy glory,” all of which develop the same musical motive: an ethereal opening section inspired by images of space from the Hubble Space Telescope, a stirring middle section inspired by images of our own planet as viewed from the International Space Station, and a closing section which brings the listener down to Earth, where cities teem with the energy of humanity. The Agnus Dei is a plea for deliverance and peace. The Lux Aeterna which then closes the work portrays light, peace, and rest — for both the deceased and the living.