O God of spirits and of all flesh, Who hast trampled down death and overthrown the Devil, and given life to Thy world, do Thou, the same Lord, give rest to the souls of Thy departed servants in a place of brightness, a place of refreshment, a place of repose, where all sickness, sighing, and sorrow have fled away. Pardon every transgression which they have committed, whether by word or deed or thought. For Thou art a good God and lovest mankind; because there is no man who lives yet does not sin, for Thou only art without sin, Thy righteousness is to all eternity, and Thy word is truth.
the departed
At the funeral and during the last scenes of The Departed, both Costigan and Sullivan are honored as heroes as sanctioned history begins to be written. Not a word is spoken about Brown. He is another of the faithful departed that are part of the story, but are written out of the official record. Brown brings The Departed full circle, back to the race riots which served as the film's introduction to Boston and which justify the final shot of the rat and the golden dome of Faneuil Hall. Scorsese's tales of Irish and Italian immigrants making it in America is really a Darwinist narrative of the violent struggle among insular ethnic groups desperately trying to capture a small sphere of influence. Crucially important is that these immigrants have the ability to assimilate into the dominant white mainstream, unlike the African Americans whose places they take. 2ff7e9595c
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