"no more fitting end"

1886-1948

"In 1922 Casel had become chaplain to a community of Benedictine nuns in Westphalia and it was there that he suddenly died, during the Easter vigil in 1948, just as he had sung the threefold Lumen Christi and . . . was about to sing the Exsultet.  For one whose life had been dedicated to bringing out the meaning of the greatest festival in Christian life no more fitting end could have been devised by the pious imagination of a medieval hagiographer."

     Fergus Kerr, O.P., "Odo Casel:  mystery, worship and word," Life of the Spirit 17, no. 1962 (December 1962):  211 (211-221).  I was put onto this by Patrick Prétot, "La réforme de la semaine sainte sous Pie XII (1951-1956):  enjeux d'un premier pas vers la réforme liturgique de Vatican II," Questions liturgiques 93 (2012):  200n20 (196-217), but there seems to be some variation in the accounts of precisely when in relation to the Exsultet this happened.