Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
October 30, 2013
All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’, and All Souls’
This week is the Christian autumn (in the northern hemisphere,
at least) Triduum (three day festival): All Hallows’ Eve (Oct. 31), All Saints’
Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2).
It mirrors the Spring Triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter
Sunday). Where spring reminds us of life
and new beginnings, the fall reminds of death and the endings that must precede
new things.
Here at Trinity, at 4:45 p.m. on Thursday, we will have our
half-hour All Hallows’ Service for the community after the Halloween parade: all
are welcome. We will transfer our
commemorations for Friday and Saturday:
the noon mass on Thursday will use the All Souls’ readings, and on
Sunday we will celebrate All Saints’ Sunday (with a litany for all the beloved
departed).
Our commemorations of the departed, both the Saints and all
the rest, remind us that we all—living, dead, and yet-to-come—are in this together,
beloved creatures of our loving God. We
remember the examples of the saints and hope that they pray for us; we mourn
the loss of the beloved ones we no longer see, and we pray for them. As May Sarton says so well in her poem “All
Souls,” mourning and remembrance do not end.
They are signs of the love that binds us together.
All Souls
--May Sarton
Did someone say that there would be an
end,
an end, Oh, an end to love and mourning?
What has been once so interwoven cannot be raveled,
not the gift ungiven.
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing.
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited--
only the strands grow richer with each loss
and memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
we who find shelter in the warmth within,
listen and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
as the lost human voices speak through us and blend our complex love,
our mourning without end.
an end, Oh, an end to love and mourning?
What has been once so interwoven cannot be raveled,
not the gift ungiven.
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing.
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited--
only the strands grow richer with each loss
and memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
we who find shelter in the warmth within,
listen and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
as the lost human voices speak through us and blend our complex love,
our mourning without end.
Grace and Peace,
Fr. Tony+
No comments:
Post a Comment