A Reflection on All Souls

As we approach, All Souls, a reflection on what the evening service has meant to me, looking back at past years. I have usually had three names to remember, my father, my lover, and her mother, all of whose funerals are still even now sharp in my mind. This year my uncle also died, and there are four.

All Souls: A Reflection on Light, Memory, and Communion

All Souls has always felt to me like a threshold - a moment when the veil between past and present thins, and we gather not merely to remember, but to participate in a sacred act of communal memory.

It is not just a date in the liturgical calendar. It is a procession of love and grief, a shared offering that binds us across generations. The calling of names, one by one, and the lighting of candles by those who step forward - these are not gestures of performance, but acts of presence. Each name spoken aloud becomes a thread in the tapestry of our parish story. Each flame, lit by each individual's hands, rises as a prayer - not only to God, but to the hearts of those around us.

There is something profoundly healing in this shared ritual. To stand beside others as they name their dead is to be reminded that mourning is not solitary, and that the Church - at its best - is a place where memory is held with reverence, not rationed.

In a time when simplification and streamlining are often seen as virtues, I find myself wondering whether peace is truly found in efficiency. Perhaps, in this context, peace is found in presence - in the slow, deliberate act of remembering together. In the dignity of participation.

All Souls invites us to be companions in memory. It asks us to hold space for one another’s grief, and to kindle light not only for those we’ve lost, but for those still walking beside us. It is a liturgy of love, and I hope we continue to honour it with the fullness of our hearts and the quiet courage of our hands.