All Saints

We gather for worship this week on All Hallows Eve, or the day preceding All Saints Day when the Church remembers and gives thanks for the lives of the saints among us who have died in the past year.  While we mourn and grieve their loss, we do so as a people of hope, knowing that we are joined together and made one in Christ through the waters of baptism by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And, as St. Paul reminds us, for those who are in Christ, nothing can separate us from God or from one another - not even death.  This means that whenever and wherever the Church gathers, the saints gather with us.  The great cloud of witnesses that has run the race before us and by whose love and example we are more than we might otherwise be, they are with us, and together we are the communion of the saints.  On Sunday, the Word will be proclaimed by our choir and orchestra through the words of John Rutter’s Requiem.