Dearest friends,
One of the questions people sometimes ask about All Souls is why we pray for the dead. If those who have died are already in God’s hands, what difference can our prayers make? Are we trying to persuade God to be merciful, or to change something which has already been decided?
The answer begins with love. When somebody dies, our love for them does not suddenly end. We still speak their name, remember the things they taught us, laugh at stories about them, and sometimes find ourselves wanting to tell them something which has happened. Death changes the way in which we know a person, but it does not make the relationship meaningless. Praying for the dead is one of the ways in which that continuing love is given a voice.
We are not trying to convince a reluctant God to care about them. God already knows them more completely than we ever could. He knows every kindness which nobody else noticed, every wound they carried silently, every mistake, every hope, and every part of their life which remained unfinished. When we pray for somebody who has died, we place them again into the mercy which has surrounded them from the beginning.
There can be a temptation to imagine death as a wall which divides the living from the dead so completely that nothing remains between us. The Church gives us a different picture. In Jesus, we belong to one communion which embraces both earth and heaven. At every Mass, our worship is joined with that of the angels and saints and with the whole company of heaven. The people we love have not fallen outside the life of the Church simply because we can no longer see them.
This is why All Saints and All Souls sit so closely together. On All Saints’ Day, we celebrate the great multitude gathered before God: people of every nation, language, age, and circumstance whose lives have been made complete in him. At All Souls, we bring before God the particular names and faces which belong to our own stories. Some were people of obvious faith; others may have struggled, doubted, or never found words for what they believed. We entrust them all to a mercy larger than our understanding.
Prayer also changes something within us. Grief can leave us feeling helpless because there is nothing more we can do for the person who has died. Prayer allows that helplessness to become love rather than despair. We can give thanks for them, ask forgiveness for what was unresolved, and entrust to God the things which we were never able to say. None of that erases grief, but it places grief within hope.
This week we will celebrate our All Souls Masses at St John’s on Tuesday and at St Luke’s on Wednesday. We will read aloud the names entrusted to us, not because God needs reminding of them, but because we do. Each name represents a life which mattered, a life still held within God’s love, and a person whose story has become part of our own.
In love,
Fr. Matthew
Sunday 1st November
All Saints – Solemnity ⚪️
9am – Sung Parish Mass [SJ]
11:15am – Sung Parish Mass [SL]
Year A(II), Psalm week 3, All Saints’ Day (Principal Feast)
Upcoming Dates
Oct
31st – Quiz Night (7pm) [SL]
Nov
4th – St. Luke’s Ladies Group [SL]
8th – Parish Lunch [SL]
20th – ‘Western’ Class 52 Diesel-Hydraulic Locomotives in
Camera, 1975–1977 (7pm) [SL]
21st – Table Top Sale (10am) [WH]
Rosary Group, 10:30am [SL]
25th – Last Night of the Proms Concert (7pm) [SL]
26th – Advent Course on Mary – Week 1 – 7pm at St Paul’s Hall
29th – CTNA Advent Service (4pm) [SL]
Advent Carols by Candlelight (6.30pm) [SJ]
Dec
2nd – St. Luke’s Ladies Group [SL]
3rd – Advent Course on Mary – Week 2 – 7pm at St Paul’s Hall 6th – Rowcroft Carol Service (3pm) [SL]
9th – Darby and Joan Club Carol Service (2pm) [SJ]
10th – Advent Course on Mary – Week 3 – 7pm at St Paul’s Hall
11th – Bingo, 7pm [SL]
12th – Christmas Fair [WH]
13th – Parish Lunch [SL]
17th – Advent Course on Mary – Week 4 – 7pm at St Paul’s Hall
20th – Nine Lessons and Carols (6pm) [SJ & SL]
24th – Small Blessings Crib Service (morning, time TBC) [SL]
Live Nativity (4pm) [SJ]
Candlelit Midnight Mass (11.30pm) [SL]
25th – Christmas Day Mass (10am) [SJ & SL]
[SJ] St. John’s | [SL] St. Luke’s | [WH] Wickham Hall
[SC] St. Catherine’s School