Why We Keep All Saints' Sunday

Every year, around the beginning of November, the Church pauses for something ancient and tender: All Saints’ Sunday. It’s one of the oldest Christian observances—rooted in the early centuries when followers of Jesus gathered to remember the martyrs, those who had died for their faith. Over time, the Church widened the lens, realizing that holiness doesn’t only show up in dramatic acts of courage or sacrifice. It also shows up in quiet lives of faithfulness, in ordinary love made extraordinary by grace.

Today, All Saints’ Sunday is not about a select few. It’s about the whole communion of saints—the great cloud of witnesses—all those who have lived and died in God’s love. It’s the Church’s way of saying that death doesn’t have the final word, that our lives are bound together across time, and that the love of God stretches wider and deeper than we can see.

All Saints’, however, is not a funeral. A funeral is personal. It tells the story of a particular life—its beauty, its struggle, its meaning. We give thanks for the individual. We name the grief of their absence. All Saints’, though, is communal. It gathers all our griefs into one act of worship and hope. It reminds us that we belong to a story larger than any single life—a story where death is not the end, where love still holds, and where God is still gathering us into wholeness.

At a funeral, we commend one person into God’s care. At All Saints’, we remember that we are all held together in that same care.

When we light candles and speak the names of those who have gone before, we’re not pretending death doesn’t hurt. We’re proclaiming that even in our sorrow, we are not alone. We’re claiming that every name still matters, that every life still belongs, that every act of love echoes on.

All Saints’ Sunday is not about trying to forget. It’s about remembering differently—not through absence, but through connection. Not through fear, but through faith. Not through despair, but through the quiet conviction that love endures.

We keep All Saints’ because we need the reminder that our stories are intertwined, that heaven and earth are not as far apart as we think, and that in God’s time, all will be made whole.

So this Sunday, as the names of those we have lost in the past year are read here at St. Paul, as candles are lit, and as we share in holy communion, may we remember that we stand in the company of saints—past and present, known and unknown—held together by a love that does not end. Come with your grief, your gratitude, your memories, and your hope. Come to be reminded that you belong to something larger than loss, something holy and enduring. Come and remember—with tears, with light, with faith.

There’s room for you here.
Pr. Melissa

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