All Saints’ Day is a day for remembering. The word saint simply means “holy”. In the New Testament, all those who believe and were baptized were referred to as saints. It wasn’t until round about the third century that the church began using the word saint to refer to those who had been martyred for the faith. Over time these martyred saints were held up for veneration and people used to pray to them to intercede on their behalf. I’m not going to go into all of the institutional abuses that led Martin Luther and the later reformers to abolish the veneration of the saints. Except to say, that while the Reformation put an end to the veneration of the saints in the protestant churches, it did not abolish the concept of sainthood.
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Ceremonies are points of cohesion beyond the boundaries of reason, a journey into the shadowy mystical world of the human spirit …
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Where are you, my Comfort?
In fears, apprehensions
Disruptions, grief, delays
Wholeness is a process rather than a static state: it is not an end to the journey but the journey itself.
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Oh, Source of All Gratitude, help us to be Thankful when we are tested to our limits
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Over the years, I have become much more discerning about the music and the texts that we use. There are many—MANY—hymns that I have dearly loved since childhood, that I just will not use any more, because the theology in them does not reflect an experience of the Divine that I wish to perpetuate.
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In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
We remember them.
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!
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