COMMEMORATION OF 

ALL FAITHFUL DEPARTED

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

 

 

 

Together, the Feasts of All Saints (November 1st) and All Souls (November 2nd) direct our attention to one of the basic teachings of the Christian faith explicitly mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed: namely, the Communion of Saints. Here, the word “Communion” means fellowship or community.

 

The Church’s traditional doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches that the Church exists in three dimensions or states, sometimes called the Church Militant, the Church Expectant, and the Church Triumphant.

 

The Church Militant consists of all Christians alive on this earth at any given moment in time. The Church Expectant consists of those Christians who have fallen asleep in the Lord, but are still awaiting the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment. And the Church Triumphant consists of all those Christians who have entered into the fullness of the joy of heaven where they see God face to face.

 

So, when we speak of the Communion of Saints, the key point being made is that the Church’s fellowship encompasses all three: Church Militant, Church Expectant, and Church Triumphant. In Christ, we enjoy the bonds of community not only with all other Christians alive on this earth here and now, but also with those who have gone before us. The Church is a fellowship of the living and the dead.

 

This year, as I was thinking about all this, it occurred to me that All Saints and All Souls look at the same mystery from different vantage points with respect to time. All Saints Day views the Church from the perspective of eternity, after the end of time, indeed from outside time as we know it. From this viewpoint, we see the Church’s final end, when all are safely gathered into God’s kingdom. All Saints Day thus offers us a glimpse of our future, and the future of all the faithful, in the Church Triumphant.

 

All Souls Day, by contrast, looks at the same mystery from the vantage point of the present moment, from within time. Our departed loved ones are gone from our sight, and we’re all still waiting in hope for the coming of God’s kingdom—both we in the Church Militant, and the Faithful Departed in the Church Expectant.

 

The Church’s prayer for the Faithful Departed is that they may “rest in peace.” But what does this rest refer to? Even though the Church’s prayers do refer to “eternal rest,” I suspect that the rest being mentioned here refers primarily not to our final destination in heaven, for then we’ll be too busy enjoying the celebration to do much resting, but rather to the intermediate state between this life and the life of the world to come. We pray that the souls of the Faithful Departed may rest in peace as they await the resurrection of the dead. Or, as some versions of the prayer put it, that they may “rest in peace and rise in glory.”

 

Think of some of the implications of this prayer. On a few occasions in the course of my priestly ministry—thankfully, very few—I’ve been called upon to bless a house or residence troubled by paranormal activity. In some cases, not all but some, the underlying problem turns out to be what’s called a restless spirit: that is, the soul of a dead person who is neither at rest nor at peace. When that turns out to be the case, the Church’s prescribed course of action is not only to bless the location, but also to pray for the repose of the troubled soul, that it may depart to its appointed place, there to wait until the day of resurrection.

 

But such cases are by far the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, we pray for the souls of the departed simply to express our love for them—in the conviction that it’s the one effective thing that we can still do to help them in their continuing journey into the light of God’s presence, and in the hope that others will so pray for us when our time comes to enter into that rest.

 

In this life, rest brings healing and wholeness. Ideally, we wake up restored and rejuvenated by our nightly sleep. So much the more, then, with the faithful departed resting in the sleep of peace. God’s Holy Spirit continues and completes the work, normally begun in this life at baptism, of healing all their infirmities and cleansing away all their sins. Then, at the sound of the last trumpet, they will wake up and rise from their sleep, ready to see God face to face and enter into the joy of their eternal inheritance.

 

In a sense, a Requiem Eucharist is basically an all-purpose funeral service. We give thanks for the lives of the faithful departed, especially those whom we love but see no longer. We celebrate the Christian hope of resurrection from the dead. The purple color of our vestments this evening signifies not so much penitence as Advent hope for the day of the Lord’s coming. But, most of all, we pray that until that day, the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may rest in peace. Amen.