This is especially true this weekend as the cathedral celebrates All Saints Day on Sunday. In the service we will appreciate that No Christian is solitary. Through baptism each of us becomes a member one of another in Christ, a member of the company of saints whose mutual belonging transcends death:

As Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn Let saints on earth in concert sing

One family, we dwell in him,
one Church, above, beneath;
though now divided by the stream,
the narrow stream of death.

All Saints’ Day celebrates this mutual belonging. It celebrates men and women in whose lives the Church as a whole has seen the grace of God powerfully at work. It is an opportunity to give thanks for that grace, and for the wonderful ends to which it shapes a human life; it is a time to be encouraged by the example of the saints and to recall that sanctity may grow in the ordinary circumstances, as well as the extraordinary crises, of human living. This year we may also choose to celebrate the saints in a more local and intimate key. We may remember with thanksgiving before God those whom we have known more directly: those who gave us life, or who nurtured us in faith.

In this season of remembering which will include Remembrance Sunday next weekend, we might do well to take time to remember and give thanks for all the saints, including those who directly touched our lives.

I occasionally use prayers from the Iona Community that encourages us to remember

those who helped us come to faith,
by singing songs and telling stories,
by inviting us when we felt distant,
by praying for us without being asked.

Who might you give thanks to God for, in this season of remembrance?

Grace and Peace,

Canon Michael