tisdag 20 augusti 2013

The Mystical Burial

Surge, qui dormis, et exsurge a mortuis, et illuminabit te Christus.

A monastic postulant is about to submit his final monastic vows. He prostrates, and as funeral bells ring out, a cloth laid over him. 

This, a monastic ritual known as the mystical burial, is to symbolize that the individual person dies, to be resurrected as a monk, fully consecrated to God. These words are then read to the postulant by the abbot of the monastery:

Arise, you who sleep, and rise up from death, and Christ shall enlighten you.