Proficiscere (Go Forth, Christian Soul)

The Proficiscere is the climax of the Church’s commendation of the dying — the great prayer of departure, spoken over a soul at the very moment it leaves the body. Its first word is a command of holy confidence: Proficíscere — "Go forth," "Set out." Death, for the Christian, is not a falling but a going forth, a journey begun; and the Church speeds the soul on its way with the most solemn escort words she possesses.

The prayer sends the soul out "in the name" of the whole of heaven. First in the name of the Holy Trinity — the Father "who created thee," the Son "who suffered for thee," the Holy Spirit "who was poured out upon thee" — the very Name in which the soul was baptized is now the Name in which it dies. Then it invokes, rank upon rank, the entire heavenly host — Angels and Archangels, Thrones and Dominions, Principalities and Powers, Cherubim and Seraphim (eight of the nine choirs) — and every order of the saints — Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Monks, Hermits, and Virgins. The dying Christian is committed to the care of all of them at once.

It ends with the soul’s destination named in hope: "may thy place be this day in peace, and thy abode in holy Sion" — the heavenly Jerusalem, "the city of the living God" (Hebrews 12:22). This prayer so moved Blessed John Henry Newman that he built his poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865) around it — the soul of Gerontius sent forth by these very words — and Sir Edward Elgar set it to music that carried the prayer to the whole world.