The Requiem for Souls service in Bethesda-by-the-Sea will be held on Sunday

Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church invites the community to honor the memory of deceased loved ones during its Requiem for Souls Sunday service.

The service, scheduled for 4 p.m., will pay tribute to those who died last year through a combination of faith and song. The Bethesda Choir, supported by the orchestra, will perform “Requiem” by the famous British conductor John Rutter.

“It’s a piece that gives everyone a sense of hope and peace, and that’s what I really love about it,” Stuart Forster, the church’s music and liturgical adviser, told the Daily News on Tuesday.

The seven movements of Rutter’s Requiem will be interwoven throughout the service, and the church’s rector, the Reverend Tim Schenck, will read the Obituary, in memory of those who passed between the movements.

There will be a moment of remembrance halfway through the service.

“We invite people to bring their grief into this transcendent space and remember and reflect and be reminded through prayers, scriptures and beautiful music of Jesus’ promise of eternal life,” Schenck told the Daily News on Tuesday. “That out of darkness comes light, out of death comes resurrection. So the whole service is ultimately rooted in the hope and joy of the resurrection.”

This sentiment echoes the motif of the final movement of the Requiem, Lux Aeterna, Forster’s favorite movement.

“It starts with the solo soprano interacting with the choir, but then, when the choir takes over, the sopranos themselves get a big section (singing) where they repeat that ‘life is eternal’ and ‘May eternal light shine upon them,’ and that’s after it’s just the most wonderful piece of melody and it really lifts our spirits,” Forster said. “Then there is a slight respite in the melody of the first movement, so it seems to be a very happy ending to the book.”

The service at the church on the corner of South County Road and Barton Avenue is open to the public. Reception will begin five minutes prior to the service, and a reception for parishioners will be held following the service in Bethesda-by-the-Sea.

“It will be a wonderful and moving service with Dr. Forster conducting the Bethesda Chorus and Orchestra, as he always does,” Schenck said.

Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist in Daily news from Palm Beachpart of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He can be contacted at [email protected].