It seems that it is time for my annual plaint regarding the conflation of All Saints’ Day and the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed. In this case the conflation was made and defended by no less than the bishop of the diocese in which I work, and was compounded by the observation of All Saints’ Day on the Sunday following, which corollarily eclipsed Proper 27.

To conflate these celebrations and reduce them to a generic ‘remembrance of the departed’ has at least two negative results:

1  The removal of sanctification as a goal for the Christian life. The bishop claimed, essentially, that to revere the Saints would be to set an impossibly high standard of holiness, and then to risk feeling bad that we could not measure up. I say rather that the veneration of the Saints, and the celebration of All Saints’ Day, shows that such holiness, through the grace of God, the precedent of Our Lord, the strengthening of the Spirit, the renewal of the Sacraments, the prayers of the selfsame Saints, and our own willingness and effort, is possible, and would argue that it is the Lord’s desire and goal for each of us.

2  The removal of self-examination and/or divine judgement as means to sanctification. Though every funeral ideally has an element of the former, and this season of pre-Advent focuses on the latter, All Souls’ is where the two meet most forcefully, where prophecy and apocalyptic, reading the signs of the times (and what signs there are just now, far transcending the outcome of one election in one nation), reveal the fulness of what lies beneath: the gap between God’s good purposes and the strife that is sadly more familiar to us; the reaping of what is sown; and the also painful and ultimately inevitable burning away by the divine glory of all masks, all walls, all idols, all dross, that imprison, enslave, distract, and corrupt.

These themes are carried forward through this season, beginning especially on Proper 27, first in the Collect –

O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us the children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant us, we beseech thee, that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves even as he is pure; that, when he shall appear again with power and great glory, we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, he liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end.

– and continuing especially with the Epistle –

As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?
     But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.

     2Th 2.13–17

– and finally wrapped up in the Gospel –

Jesus said to them, ‘...those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead... cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’

     Lk 20.34–38

These and texts like them, as well as the proper texts of the Requiem, call us to realize that we all, in common, live a precarious existence with the threat of destruction from war, famine, disease, and disaster, in much of whose causes and effects we are all implicated in some way. All of us, these texts tell us, have need to repent of our destructive ways and appetites, and instead to live lives that prepare us to meet our Maker – in those around us and in our own hearts, in the Sacraments, at the end of our lives and the end of all things – and thus the examination and amendment of our own lives is an important corollary to remembering and praying for the departed, especially here at the head of the pre-Advent season and in these troubled times. But they also tell us that this is possible, that our prayers are heard, that in the divine time and through the grace of God, we and all the faithful departed (and indeed ‘those whose faith is known to God alone’) may yet be cleansed, purified, strengthened, and made worthy to join the ranks of the blessed and to behold the glory of the Lord face to face.
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