Patrick Comerford
The week began with All Saints’ Sunday (2 November), and I imagine few if any parishes or churches marked All Souls’ Day yesterday. On All Saints’ Day on 1 November, we moved in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar to the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent.
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (3 November) remembers Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Priest, Anglican Apologist, and Teacher of the Faith; and Saint Martin of Porres (1579-1639), Dominican friar. However, when 2 November is a Sunday, then the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day) may be observed on Monday 3 November.
Charlotte and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary later today. Meanwhile, before the day begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 6: 12-14 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 37 ‘Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38 for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.’
November is a month when we traditionally remember the saints, the Communion of Saints, those who are blessed, those we love and who are now gathered around the throne of God, those who have died and who we still love.
We do that on All Souls’ Day, we do that on Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday, and we do that on All Saints’ Day.
November is a month when we traditionally remember the saints, the Communion of Saints, those we love and who are now gathered around the throne of God, those who have died and who we still love.
As the evenings close in, as the last autumn leaves fall from the trees, it is natural to remember the dead and the fallen, with love and affection.
The special days in November include:
• All Saints’ Day (1 November);
• All Souls’ Day or the ‘Commemoration of the Faithful Departed’ (2 November, Common Worship, p 15);
• In Ireland, All Saints of Ireland (6 November);
• Remembrance Sunday (9 November 2025);
• Remembrance Day (11 November).
At this time of the year there are many people in my own family I am remembering, including:
• my mother, Ellen (Murphy) Comerford, who died 11 years ago, on 20 May 2014;
• my father, Stephen Edward Comerford, who died 21 years ago on 27 December 2004;
• my brother, Stephen Edward Comerford, who died in Durham, North Carolina, 55 years ago, on 18 December 1970;
• my foster mother, Peggy Kerr, who died on 27 July 2010, and my foster father George Kerr;
• my grandparents, Stephen Edward Comerford, who died on 21 January 1921, having contracted malaria five years earlier in Thessaloniki, and Bridget (Lynders) Comerford, who died on 25 March 1948;
• my grandparents, Thomas Michael Murphy, who died in Queensland, Australia, on 10 September 1949, and Maria (Crowley) Murphy, who died on 8 July 1957;
• and, at this time of the year, my ‘Gran’, Mary (McCarthy) Hallinan, who died on 6 November 1961; and ‘Granddad’ Edmond Hallinan, who died on 8 March 1963.
Hallowe’en is the day before we remember the Hallowed, not as the dead but as the blessed, the saints, who are model for our lives, our Christian lifestyle today. We believe the dead we love are still caught up in the love of God and are alive in Christ.
Indeed, saints do not need to be dead to be examples of ‘holy living and holy dying’ (Jeremy Taylor). Saint Paul regularly refers in his letters to fellow Christians as ‘saints.’ Saints Alive!
In the past, I have realised how many people and parishes have been shy, reluctant, perhaps even fearful, in the Church of Ireland when it comes to recalling, commemorating and celebrating the saints. A comparison of the calendars of the Church of Ireland and the Church of England is very telling.
Perhaps the people who decided on the calendar in the Church of Ireland were too afraid in the past of being seen to pray to the saints, or to pray for the dead. But, really, these are quite different to finding examples of godly living among Christians from the past, and expressing confidence that the dead we have loved are now committed to God’s love.
Yet the Church of England sees the calendar of saints as a living calendar, something that is added to as we find more appropriate examples of Christian living for today.
Saints do not have to be martyrs. But in recent years Oscar Romero was canonised and there was a major commemoration in Westminster Abbey of Oscar Romero in 2017 to mark his 100th birthday.
Saints do not have to be canonised. Modern martyrs include Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, or Heather Heyer, the civil rights activist killed by far-right neo-Nazis and racists in Charlottesville, Kentucky, in 2017.
Many of us know people who handed on the faith to us – teachers, grandparents, perhaps neighbours. Even though many may be long dead, they remain part of our vision of the Communion of Saints.
Saints do not have to live a perfect life; as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, ‘if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves’ (I John 1: 8) … none of us is without sin, and none of us is beyond redemption. Some of the saints carved on the West Front of Westminster Abbey might have been very surprised to know they were going to appear there. But their lives in sum total are what we are asked to think about.
They are: Maximilian Kolbe, Manche Masemola, Archbishop Janani Luwum, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Esther John, Lucian Tapiedi, and Wang Zhiming.
Some years ago, I asked students to share stories of their favourite ‘saints and heroes.’ They included an interesting array of people, some who were the still living at the time, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In interviews in the Church Times, people are sometimes asked who they would like to be locked into a church with for a few hours.
Who are your favourite saints?
Who would you like to learn from a little more when it comes to living the Christian life?
This year marks the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, in which we express our belief in ‘the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come’. In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess our belief in ‘the communion of saints’ and ‘the resurrection of the body.’
In the introduction to the Church Calendar and this in-between time, the time between All Saints and Advent, the resources for Common Worship remind us that ‘No Christian is solitary. Through baptism we become members one of another in Christ, members of a company of saints whose mutual belonging transcends death’. The resources then quote Charles Wesley:
One family, we dwell in him,
one Church, above, beneath;
though now divided by the stream,
the narrow stream of death.
Who are the saints in your life, in your own personal calendars? Who are those you recall whose souls we have committed to God’s love and who are part of ‘the communion of saints’?
Throughout the month of November, there are opportunities to remember their names as we are reminded in the first reading today that ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, no torment will ever touch them’ (Wisdom 3: 1).
Today’s Prayers (Monday 3 November 2025, All Souls’):
The theme this week (2 to 8 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘From Solitude to Connection’ (pp 52-53). This theme was introduced yesterday with a Programme Update from Ljudmila, a Ukrainian Refugee living in Budapest, Hungary.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 3 November 2025, All Souls’) invites us to pray:
Lord, as a God of peace, we pray that you will bring peace to Ukraine so families like Ljudmila’s may live without fear, reunited in safety and love.
The Collect:
Eternal God, our maker and redeemer,
grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure benefits of your Son’s saving passion
and glorious resurrection
that, in the last day,
when you gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of your promises;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God of love,
may the death and resurrection of Christ
which we have celebrated in this eucharist
bring us, with all the faithful departed,
into the peace of your eternal home.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ,
our rock and our salvation,
to whom be glory for time and for eternity.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
