ALL SOULS DAY

November 2, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

When I made my first trip as an adult to England in my twenties, I was almost always struck by the sheer numbers of memorials in the cathedrals and churches I visited. The interior walls and walkways were typically strewn with busts and statues, reliefs, plaques, and inscriptions, extolling the accomplishments and virtues of deceased parishioners and local dignitaries. Nowhere more than in Westminster Abbey, where so many of the nation’s heroes, statesmen, poets, and artists are commemorated with a proliferation of lavish monuments taking up almost every bit of free space in that vast building.

 

The erection of memorials is part of a wider pattern of offerings and gifts to commemorate the dead. As in many other parishes, Christ Church is beautified by dozens and dozens of memorial gifts in memory of departed loved ones: from virtually all of the stained-glass windows, to the pietà by the choir, to the carved Christus Rex and angels on the west wall above the front entrance. 

 

On All Souls Day, it seems appropriate to reflect on this impulse to memorialize the departed. Why do we do it? 

Such offerings fulfill some deep-seated human needs. To begin with, they express our emotions of sorrow and mourning. Particularly in England, many Victorian monuments adorning the churches and graveyards feature weeping angels, winged hourglasses, broken vases, and other symbols of loss and desolation. One gets the impression that such monuments serve to memorialize the grief of the living as much as the memory of the dead.

 

Memorial offerings also express thanksgiving for the lives of the departed. This is particularly true of monuments erected to public figures, such as the Washington Monument and the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials in Washington DC. And here in Church people likewise offer memorial gifts in thanksgiving for the ways in which departed loved ones enriched the lives of their families, friends, parish, and community.

 

Most of all, perhaps, these memorial offerings express the natural human desire to ensure that the deceased will be remembered and not forgotten. The literal meaning of the word “memorial,” after all, is an aid to memory, a reminder, a stimulus to remembrance: lest we forget. We offer these memorials so that those who see them will call to mind those in whose memory they were given. 

 

Sometimes it works, even over many generations, long after no-one alive remembers the people being memorialized. That plaque on the north wall of the chancel still calls to mind the Episcopal Missionary to Woodbury, William Herbert Norris, who founded this parish and built this church building.

 

So, the impulse to offer memorial gifts responds to the human need to express in tangible form our mourning and grief, our gratitude for the lives of the deceased, and our desire to keep their memories alive for generations to come. All this is perfectly natural and entirely good. And yet – everything I’ve described so far can be done just as well by atheists and agnostics as by people of faith.

 

All Souls Day reminds us that as Christians we have the opportunity to do something more. In addition to memorializing the dead we can also pray for them. This practice hinges on the conviction that even though the departed are no longer visibly with us, nonetheless they’re alive in Christ.

 

The doctrine of the Communion of the Saints teaches us that in Christ we have fellowship with both the living and the dead. Just as we pray for one another here on earth, so the saints in heaven pray for us; and both they and we pray for the souls of the faithful departed. We have the assurance that in God’s providence our prayers really do benefit and help the departed in their continuing heavenward journey. And we have the hope that just as we pray for the dead, so too, after our time comes, the members of the Church on earth will pray for us as well.

 

Bereavement, the loss of a loved one, is a painful ordeal. When someone in our community loses someone, it’s often difficult to know what to say. We want to say something lest it seem that we don’t care; yet we’re also reluctant to say anything that might come across as too intrusive. Our society’s therapeutic culture responds to almost every life event in terms of how we feel about it and how it makes us feel. But people who’ve been recently bereaved often tell me that the last thing they need is well-meaning people prying into how they’re processing their feelings about their loss, or worse, telling them how they must be feeling, or how they should be feeling.

 

The good news is that our Christian tradition gives us a very different language for speaking of death and bereavement. When we encounter someone who’s just lost a loved one, above and beyond such conventional sentiments as “I’m very sorry for your loss,” we can also say something like, “I will pray for her; and I will pray for you as well.” That need not be just a sanctimonious platitude – provided that we follow through and actually say the prayers that we promise! In my experience, ninety-nine per cent of the time, people are touched, grateful, and even comforted to be told that we’re praying for their departed loved ones, no matter what their religious beliefs or lack thereof may be.

 

Now, of course, we pray for the departed not merely so that we can have something comforting to say to the bereaved, but because we believe that such prayers are intrinsically worthwhile. My point is simply that if we take seriously the Church’s teaching and practice concerning prayers for the dead, we gain a whole new language for responding to bereavement that’s clearly counter-cultural, but also remarkably effective in offering solace and comfort.

 

This evening, then, we gather to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for all the faithful departed. All Souls Day reminds us that as Christians we’re called not only to memorialize the dead, but also to pray for them. And, throughout the year, whenever we encounter a memorial gift given in loving memory of someone departed this life – even something as simple as flowers at the altar – we do well always to remember them with a prayer: that they may rest in peace and rise in glory.