All Saints, All Souls

The names of all the recently departed we have prayed for in the Prayers of the People, as well as the names of those who have died in the past year and were submitted to the church, will be read aloud.

These readings of names and the remembering of our dead of this past year in these special services allow us to create sacred and holy worship experiences that hold together the range of feelings that are part of that first year of losing a loved one. The sheer grief we feel with the loss of their presence in our daily lives, the grief of a relationship that may not have ended as we had hoped, and the myriad ways that grief ebbs and flows as we find a new way of being in the world. And, at the same time we are experiencing deep grief, we look for ways to hold fast to the promise of the resurrection, and that every tear will be wiped away, and nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even death. The church calendar wisely separates the focus of celebration of the heroic faith and sacrifices of the well-known saints and martyrs traditionally remembered on All Saints Day and those “more ordinary holy ones and loved ones” of our own lives, parish, family and friends. They too should be remembered with all the saints and all the faithful departed, even those of uncertain faith, because we believe nothing limits the mercy of God.