Dear Friends,
The weather man has just announced the first snow of the season, and those with me in the staff kitchen of the Parish House shuddered. There is something very particular about November, coming with the change of the clocks and the shortening of days – the month of Remembering.
On Sunday at 11am, you will be able to worship with the Fauré Requiem, undoubtedly one of the best-loved settings of the funeral liturgy, with its glimpses of hope shining through the rich texture of its composition. At 4:00pm, we will remember our war-dead and, in particular, the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings of the Second World War.
The Church, in her wisdom, places All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day next to each other. Here, at Saint Thomas Church, we keep All Saints’ Sunday and then Remembrance Sunday. They are Sundays of great contrast – All Saints with its gold vestments, processions, flowers and Alleluias; and Remembrance Sunday with its black vestments and somber solemnity, when even the color of the candles reflect a change of mood.
Life and death – they are the only two things that are certain in our lives. And yet, as St Augustine proclaimed:
“We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!”
The Church needs All Saints and All Souls – Celebration and Remembrance – because we live in the light of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and yet, as mortals, fear death and miss those whom we love. I remember in the 1970’s when the liturgical color of black was abandoned by many churches and mass of the Resurrection became commonplace. I understood the theology, even the logic, but it did not resonate with my emotions. As a wise old priest once said to me at a funeral, “Yes, we believe in the joy of the promise of resurrection, but you cannot escape the fact that the person – your friend whom you loved – is dead and you miss him.” Yes, the liturgy can hold both of these truths in tension so that, as the Lord reminds us, our joy may be complete. Let me share a beautiful poem by Malcolm Guite, entitled “Sonnet for All Saints”:
Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards
Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light,
It glances from the eyes, kindles the words
Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright
With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,
The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed.
Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing
He weaves them with us in the web of being
They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;
The gathered glories of His wounded love.
Affectionately in Christ,
Carl,
your priest and pastor
