THE COMMUNITY OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
At the beginning of November Christians remember their dead, both at All
Saints and at All Souls Day.
Both these festivals belong together. On these days we remember those
who were believers before us and to whom we owe our faith. At All Saints
we think of those who have had their lives determined by God, at All Souls
we are thinking that the dead are alive in the Lord, but remain close to us in
different ways. The hope of Eternal Life unites the living and the dead in one
community, as we declare in the Apostle’s Creed:” we believe in the
Community of the Saints, Remission of sins, Resurrection of the Flesh and
Live Everlasting”
All Souls, the day of
remembering the
dead, is a festival
which answers the
need for not forgetting
those who went before
us, but to integrate
them into our lives.
The festival was
introduced in 998 AD for
all Benedictine
monasteries, but it spread
fast within the entire
Church. During the Middle
Ages it was usual to pray
for the dead and to have
Holy Masses read for
them. We now feel
differently, we do not
need to ‘do something’ for
the dead, we can trust
that they are with the Lord. But we are thankful for their lives and examples,
we somehow live ‘from their roots’.
For that reason, in most European countries it is the custom to visit and
decorate the graves of relatives in the afternoon of All Saints Day. I
remember staying as a teacher on a school exchange in Cologne with a
colleague there, who was a widower and asked me if I would go with him to
visit the grave of his wife. At that time, I could witness an event which was a
‘Blessing of the Graves’, a sermon was held, Holy Water was sprinkled on
graves which were blessed.
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