Dear Friends,

This Sunday, November 2, we celebrate one of the great feast days of the church, All Saints.’ All Saints’ Day is actually November 1, and November 2 is All Souls’ Day on the church calendar. The first day emerged as a time to remember saints and those within the faith community who had died in the previous year. All Souls’ Day developed as a day to remember all of those departed whom we knew and loved. Our celebration on the 2nd will combine both these traditions, as we will see before us the names of so may of our friends and family who have died, and heard read the names of those who have died in the past year.

All Saints’ is also one of the four days recommended by the Prayer Book for baptisms, and we will joyfully welcome new persons into the Body of Christ this Sunday as well.

Often, baptisms occur in the beginning stages of life, and as we recall the saints we remember the endings of life.  Some might describe baptisms and funerals as bookends to a life. But rather than bookends, might we look at them as gateways?

Baptism, once thought of as a necessary sacrament for salvation, is instead a beginning, the welcoming of a person into the Body of Christ, with the promises made to nourish and support that person, and to teach the way of Christ. It is a gateway. And at funerals, even as we grieve our loss, we celebrate the Good News of the resurrection: that even in death there is a beginning, a gateway to union with God that we who remain anticipate with both wonder and hope. There too, a gateway.

God embraces the whole of our lives; our beginnings and our endings. That is reason enough to come gladly to church to offer our praise and thanksgiving for all the portals through which we will pass, in this life and in the life to come.

Faithfully,

Tom