John Becker has written a simple chant called “Litany of the Saints,” which in its original form is literally a list of saints of the Catholic Church.  But it is easy to write your own lyrics!  Here is an example that we used last year on Day of the Dead.  The cantor sang the names and the congregation responded with the chant in bold.  The end of the last verse contains the names of people important to our local church who had died in the past year.  (The music is in the Gather hymnal or available for download from ocp.org.  You can also hear several renditions of it on youtube.)

Litany of the Saints

Lord have mercy.  Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.  Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.
All you holy men and women, stay with us.

Yeshua and Magdalene, Stay with us.
Thomas and Pelagius, Stay with us.
All the Desert Fathers, Stay with us.
All the Desert Mothers, Stay with us.
Saint John of the Cross, Stay with us.
Hildegard of Bingen, Stay with us.
Teresa of Avila, Stay with us.
Beguines and Meister Eckhart, Stay with us.
All you holy men and women, stay with us.

Buddha and Mohammed, Stay with us.
Lao-tzu and Chief Seattle, Stay with us.
Francis of Assisi, Stay with us.
Teilhard and Yogananda, Stay with us.
William Blake and Gandhi, Stay with us.
Bach and Albert Schweitzer, Stay with us.
Rumi and Reinhold Niebuhr, Stay with us.
Anne Frank and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Stay with us.
All you holy men and women, stay with us.

Father Romero, Stay with us.
Martin, John and Bobby, Stay with us.
Mother Teresa, Stay with us.
Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, Stay with us.
Father Hand and Daphne, Stay with us.
Ev Rouse and Douglas Adams, Stay with us.
Lisa, Vee and Virgil, Stay with us.
John Butcher, Hugh and Rosalie, Stay with us.
All you holy men and women, stay with us.

All you holy men and women, stay with us.