| rdfs:comment
| - Libera Me, like many other prayers from the Office for the Dead, asks that the person prayed for may be saved from hell. However, the question of whether or not the person was sent to hell was settled irrevocably as soon as he or she died at the particular judgment. This dramatic displacement and rearrangement of the objective order of events is employed because liturgical texts cannot express everything at one instant. Instead, the text is written as if simultaneous events followed each other in order. Likewise, while Libera Me asks God to have mercy at the Last Judgement, the fate of a person at the Last Judgement has already been determined at the particular judgment immediately at death. At the Last Judgement, all souls in heaven remain in heaven; all souls in purgatory go to heaven, a
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| abstract
| - Libera Me, like many other prayers from the Office for the Dead, asks that the person prayed for may be saved from hell. However, the question of whether or not the person was sent to hell was settled irrevocably as soon as he or she died at the particular judgment. This dramatic displacement and rearrangement of the objective order of events is employed because liturgical texts cannot express everything at one instant. Instead, the text is written as if simultaneous events followed each other in order. Likewise, while Libera Me asks God to have mercy at the Last Judgement, the fate of a person at the Last Judgement has already been determined at the particular judgment immediately at death. At the Last Judgement, all souls in heaven remain in heaven; all souls in purgatory go to heaven, and all souls in limbo and hell will remain there eternally. Prior to the reform of the Roman Missal by Pope Paul VI, Libera Me was also said on All Souls' Day (2 November) and whenever all three nocturns of Matins of the Dead were recited. On other occasions, the ninth responsory of Matins for the Dead began with "Libera me", but continued a different text (Domine, de viis inferni, etc.).
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