The church in her wisdom provides for our beloved dead in the most beautiful of ways.  Traditionally, Catholics offered masses for the deceased 3,7,30 days and annually after death.  The masses asking God to usher our loved one unto Heaven, but my goodness from a human standpoint, those are definitely pinnacle times those wretchedly afflicted with grief would benefit from the church begging prayers on behalf of their beloved. The three day mark is most likely the funeral. Then a week and a month go by marking the most lonely stages of grief. The milestones you never wanted to have to achieve. The world has moved on, but your clouded mind is just beginning to learn how to live without your beloved.  How reassuring to know that the church still remembers your beloved and is begging God to take them unto heaven.  Approaching that first year anniversary is somehow in the human heart nearly as gut wrenching and painful as when you lost them, the world most likely has forgotten, yet the church remembers, and again does what you are more than likely too tired to do yourself, she begs God mercy and for your beloved to enter into Heaven.  And when these masses are offered for a baptized infant or child before the age of reason, the Church knows the child is in Heaven and instead begs consolation for the parents.

Simply beautiful.