Patrick Comerford
Today in the Church Calendar is All Saints Day (1 November) and tomorrow is All Souls’ Day. With All Saints’ Day, we move on in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar to the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent.
Later this morning, I hope to sing with the choir at the All Saints’ Day Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today 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.
Matthew 5: 1-12 (NRSVA):
5 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’
Today’s Reflections:
All Saints’ Day is one of the 12 ‘Principal Holy Days’ of the Church. 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, all at the beginning of November.
In today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 5: 3-12), Saint Matthew gives us his version of the beatitudes, with a different emphasis than the way Saint Luke lists them (see Luke 6: 20-31).
The Beatitudes are a declaration of the happy or fortunate state of the children of God who possesses particular qualities, and who, because of them, will inherit divine blessings.
It is interesting to compare the delivery of the Beatitudes to the delivery of the Ten Commandments. Here we have the renewal of the covenant, and a restatement, a re-presentation, of who the Children of God are.
Just as we sometimes find the Ten Commandments grouped into two sets, so we might see the Beatitudes set out in two groups of four, the first four being inward looking, the second four being outward looking.
We might see the first four Beatitudes as addressing attitudes, while the second four deal with resulting actions.
Are they ethical requirements for the present?
Or they eschatological blessings for the future?
Or are they are statements of present fact, identifying the qualities of a child of God and the consequent blessings that follow?
Few among us, I imagine, are ever going to commit murder. But we all get ‘angry with a brother’ sooner or later.
The Sermon on the Mount exposes our own present reality in a very stark and real way, and the Beatitudes are a core text for Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship and in the writings of towering saintly figures such as Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Oscar Romero.
The writer and broadcaster Father Brian D’Arcy once quipped on a radio interview how Dorothy Day once spoke of how her fellow Roman Catholics went to confession regularly and confessed to ‘breaking’ one of the Ten Commandments, but she wondered how often they confessed to ‘breaking’ one of the Eight Beatitudes.
Yet the Beatitudes are culturally embedded in our society, in our literature, in our arts.
Writing on the financial pages of The Guardian, Terry Macalister said many years ago (17 January 2011): ‘From Tolstoy to Dostoevsky to Chekov, if anyone can tell a good story it’s the Russians.’ Well, in Chapter 2 of Boris Pasternak’s great Russian novel Doctor Zhivago, Larissa Feodorovna Guishar, who ‘was not religious’ and ‘did not believe in ritual’, was startled by the Beatitudes, for she thought they were about herself.
How do we apply the Beatitudes to our own lives?
Who are the poor, the hungry, those who weep and those who are persecuted today? And do we see them as saints?
Bishop William Walsham How (1823-1897) wrote his hymn, ‘For all the saints, who from their labours rest’ (459), as a processional hymn for All Saints’ Day.
The saints recalled in his hymn are ordinary people in their weaknesses and their failings. In its original form, it had 11 verses, although three are omitted from most versions – the verses extolling ‘the glorious company of the Apostles,’ ‘the godly fellowship of the prophets’ and ‘the noble army of martyrs’ were inspired by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer version of the canticle Te Deum.
The tune Sine Nomine (‘Without Name,’ referring to the great multitude of unknown saints) was written for the hymn by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) while he was editing the English Hymnal (1906) with Canon Percy Dearmer (1867-1936).
When he wrote this hymn, Walsham How was the Rector of Whittington, Shropshire, and a canon St Asaph Cathedral. He had spent time in Rome as chaplain of the Anglican Church there, All Saints’ Church, before returning to England.
While he was Bishop of Bedford, Walsham How became known as ‘the poor man’s bishop.’ He became the first Bishop of Wakefield, and died in Leenane, Co Mayo, in 1897 while he was on an Irish fishing holiday in Dulough.
The hymn vibrates with images from the Book of Revelation. The saints recalled by ‘the poor man’s bishop’ in this hymn are ordinary people who, in spite of their weaknesses and their failings, are able to respond in faith to Christ’s call to service and love, and who have endured the battle against the powers of evil and darkness.
The heart of the hymn is in the stanza that sings about the unity of the Church in heaven and on earth, ‘knit together in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of … Christ our Lord.’ Despite our ‘feeble struggles’ we are united in Christ and with one another in one ‘blest communion’ and ‘fellowship divine.’
It is a hymn that celebrates that there among the saints are the ordinary people, the people who are blessed and happy in Saint Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes this morning.
Who are the ordinary people who have been saints for you throughout your life?
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 1 November 2026, All Saints’ Day):
The theme this week (1 to 7 November 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘All Saints’ Day’ (pp 52-53). This theme is introduced today with a Reflection by Matthew Anns, Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG:
“While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.”
In the centuries since the martyrdom of Saint Stephen – venerated as the first Christian martyr – many parts of the world have become safer for Christians to live and publicly express their faith. This is a freedom we can often forget about but is something that I will forever be thankful to God for.
At USPG, I am regularly humbled by the stories we hear from our partners, many of whom are still facing the same levels of persecution, and martyrdom, that the early Christians faced. According to Open Doors’ World Watch List 2026, almost 5,000 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons between October 2024 and September 2025 – an increase of 8% from the previous year.
Despite this, like Stephen, our partners never lose their faith in Jesus, and they regularly pray for those who seek to persecute them. Their compassion and conviction for God’s mission is nothing short of awe-inspiring. It is one of the greatest privileges of working at USPG.
This week, for All Saints’ Day and beyond, we honour and celebrate all saints, both known and unknown, who have died championing justice and living out God’s mission in their own lives, throughout Church history.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 1 November 2026, All Saints’ Day) invites us to pray by reading and meditating on Matthew 5: 1-12.
The Collect of the Day:
Almighty God,
you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living
that we may come to those inexpressible joys
that you have prepared for those who truly love you;
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, the source of all holiness and giver of all good things:
may we who have shared at this table
as strangers and pilgrims here on earth
be welcomed with all your saints
to the heavenly feast on the day of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God of holiness,
your glory is proclaimed in every age:
as we rejoice in the faith of your saints,
inspire us to follow their example
with boldness and joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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
