Annual Enrollment
Requiem
Mass cycle for the Poor Souls
One year. Twenty Masses.
Enroll your intentions.
A love marked by remembrance and prayer is shown toward the departed by the faithful who were most dear to them. ...We should not think that anything reaches the dead whom we care for, except what we solemnly ask for them by the sacrifice of the altar or by prayer or alsmsgiving. ...Each person does these things very diligently for his relatives and friends, in expectation of a similar remembrance from the relatives and friends who will survive him.
—Saint Augustine
Commemoration of
All Souls
11.2.2023
With what groaning must the souls of the Faithful in Purgatory long to receive the graces of the Holy Sacrifice offered for their redemption and relief? We must not forget them. And in Her charity and wisdom, the Church certainly does not. Join us this year in praying for the Poor Souls.
The Mass setting for All Souls Day will be Manuel Cardoso’s hauntingly beautiful Missa pro Defunctis for six voices. Scroll down to read more about this work and its composer.
High Mass begins at 7 pm
Attend in person
Masses will be offered at 7 am, 12:10 pm, and 7 pm. If this will be your first visit to the Shrine, check our Schedule page for more information on confession times, parking, and directions.
More informationWatch it live online
We are very pleased to be able to invite you to watch the Mass live via our YouTube channel. If you live farther away or are not able to make it in person, plan to join us live that evening and join your prayers with ours.
Watch Mass liveEnroll your intentions
We are accepting your intentions now for our annual cycle of Requiem Masses. Remember your departed family and loved ones this year with twenty Masses offered for their souls. Use the button below to enroll their names and offer alms for their sake.
Enroll your intentionsSupport our sacred music program
We need your help to sustain our program for sacred music at the Shrine. Music is one of the Church’s oldest and most beautiful traditions – and an essential part of the sacred liturgy. We hope to someday become a center for sacred music in America, because we know that the sacrifice and effort made to preserve this element of the Mass will bear abundant spiritual fruit.
Support sacred musicOne year. Twenty Masses
“With Charity towards the dead we practice all the works of charity. The Church encourages us to aid the souls in purgatory, who in turn will reward us abundantly when they come into their glory.”
—Saint Francis de Sales
Annual enrollment
for the Poor Souls
On All Souls Day each year, we begin a new cycle of Requiem Masses offered for your intentions. A novena of Masses starts on 2 November, and then a Mass is offered every month that follows until All Souls Day of next year.
While you may enroll your dear departed at any point during the year, doing so now means that they will receive the benefit of all twenty Masses. We will place their names in the black box that sits on the altar during each of the Requiem Masses that will be offered for their souls.
Use the button below to enroll your deceased loved ones’ names – and to make a donation of alms to support the spiritual work of the Shrine.
You will have an opportunity to download and print Mass cards for your use after you submit your intentions.
Watch it live
All Souls
Commemoration of all the
Faithful Departed
2 November 2023
Réquiem aetérnam dona eis, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat eis.
(Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them.)
Come pray with us for the Poor Souls in Purgatory at this first of twenty Masses offered for them in the course of a year, or watch the broadcast of High Mass, live from the Shrine, beginning at 7 pm. The Mass setting will be Manuel Cardoso’s Missa pro defunctis for six voices, but we will also feature Hildegard von Bingen’s O Cruor Sanguinis and William Byrd’s Miserere mei.
Holy Day schedule
7:00 am Traditional Latin Mass
12:10 pm Traditional Latin Mass
7:00 pm Traditional Latin Mass (High)
“If it were but known how great is the power of the good souls in Purgatory with the Heart of God, and if we knew all the graces we can obtain through their intercession, they would not be so much forgotten. We must, therefore, pray much for them, that they may pray much for us.”
—Saint John Vianney
Sacred music at the Shrine
Manuel Cardoso
Though less well-known today than some of his contemporaries, Manuel Cardoso represented the Golden Age of Portuguese polyphony in his time. As a young man, he joined the Carmelite order and took his vows in 1589. Befriended by the Duke of Barcelos, who later became King John IV of Portugal, Cardoso was the resident composer and organist at the Carmelite convent in Lisbon for most of his career.
He was prolific and widely published. However, the Missa pro defunctis is one of the few Masses that survived the Lisbon earthquake and fire of 1755.
Cardoso’s style as a composer shares much with that of Tomás Luis de Victoria. His precise and careful use of dissonance and chromatic contradiction, as well as his polychoral writing, hearken Palestrinian polyphony rather than the Baroque idioms developing elsewhere in Europe during his day. This makes his style especially suited to sacred music, and we are very pleased to bring you one of his surviving Masses.
We hope that you will be moved to a deeper spiritual experience of the Holy Mass by Cardoso’s music. We hope, also, that you will be moved to support our efforts to establish an excellent school of sacred music here at the Shrine. Any donation you may be led to give toward those efforts will be greatly appreciated and we pray that God reward you for your generosity.
Cost for Sextet: $ 1,350
May God bless our donor’s generosity.