All Saints' Day, November 1, is one of the principal feast days of our church year, which means that it takes precedence over any other day or observance.  It is also the only feast day that can be moved from its actual date and observed on the Sunday after November 1.  All Saints' Sunday is one of the four holy days recommended in our prayer book for celebrating baptisms. 

Christians have celebrated the lives of the saints for many centuries.  As early as the third century, we know that the Christian community honored martyrs with an annual feast day, though we do not know the date they chose.  Several early Christian writers and historians have noted various festivals honoring all saints, particularly those who suffered and died for their faith.  Most scholars believe that the celebration of All Saints' Day on November 1 originated in Ireland, then spread to England, and finally to the continent of Europe. 

The word "saint" is used in the New Testament to refer to every member of the Christian community, and the word "elect" in our All Saints' Day collect is used in that sense.  ("Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship....")  From very early times, though, the Church considered "saints" to be holy men and women who engaged in heroic acts, or accomplished great achievement.  By about the tenth century, it became customary to set aside a second day, a sort of All Saints' Day extension, in order to honor all the vast numbers of faithful Christians and their lives and witness to their families, friends, and communities.  Because of abuses connected with Masses for the dead, that second day celebration was largely banned during the Reformation; but in recent decades our November 2 Feast of All the Faithful Departed has gained widespread acceptance among Anglicans, and is included in the Episcopal calendar.

I love the feasts of All Saints and All the Faithful Departed.  On All Saints' Sunday, we celebrate baptisms (in fact, we have five this year!), and we also read the list of beloved parishioners who died in the past year.  We celebrate people, usually babies or toddlers, who are just beginning their lifelong journey as Christians as we remember the beloved folks who completed their faith journeys and have already claimed the Easter promise and who dwell in light.  It is a bittersweet day in which we remember what the apostle Paul called that "great cloud of witnesses" who have gone before, and we contemplate the intercommunion of all the body of Christ, remembering that the living and the dead are connected.

The hymns for All Saints' Day are really wonderful.  "For All the Saints" is, as they say, a barnburner, celebrating those "who from their labors rest," and whose "hearts are brave and arms are strong."  My favorite is the children's hymn "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God."  In it, we sing that "one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green;" "one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce, wild beast!"  The best part of that hymn is when we sing that these "saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too."

As we celebrate All Saints and All the Faithful Departed, I would like to invite you, if you are able, to join us this Sunday and renew your baptismal covenant, support the five little ones who will be baptized, and remember those who died in the last year.  Join us as we sing the great All Saints hymns, and join for our Eucharist.  And I would also like to invite you to think about who the saints are in your life.  It might be someone our church commemorates as a saint, whose courage and grace inspires you.  Or it might be someone whom you love and who made a difference in your life: a fellow parishioner or a parent or sibling, a beloved church musician or church school teacher or minister.  If that person is living, consider giving him or her a call or dropping a line.  If that person has died, remember him or her, dig out a photo if you have one, and most of all, thank God for the witness of that beloved person.

Richard Hooker may well top the list of Anglican theologians.  Born in 1553 near Exeter, he attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and later became a Fellow.  He married and was ordained in 1581, serving a number of parishes.  Hooker became perhaps our foremost Anglican theologian as a result of a public controversy with a noted Puritan, who criticized Anglicanism.  Hooker prepared a multi-volume defense of Anglicanism, called Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.  This work is a theological masterpiece.

Hooker's writing emphasized natural law, planted by God, and he wrote that God's natural law is a foundation for all positive Church law, and that both the Church and individual Christians can use scripture, ancient tradition, and reason (which includes experience) in discernment.  One entire volume of the Laws is a defense of the Book of Common Prayer, which had been criticized by Puritan detractors.  Though his arguments were steeped in his enormous learning, he also drew heavily from his work as a parish priest who had used and loved the prayer book for twenty years.  Hooker defended the Elizabethan Settlement of 1558 and 1559, in which Queen Elizabeth I and her agents broke officially with the Roman Church, attempting to negotiate a "middle way" between the Reformation and Catholicism, and establishing a system of uniform worship based on the prayer book.

Though he was a fierce intellect, Richard Hooker was a dedicated priest, and contemporaries described him as a patient and serene person, moderate and kind.  Pope Clement VIII said that Hooker's work "had in it such seeds of eternity that it would abide until the last fire shall consume all learning." 

We remember with love those in our parish family who died this year:

Debbie Boulay

Gardner Gray, Sr.

Anne White

Mark Nichols

Carolyn Webster Poor

Marilyn E. Bethune

Caroline Anne Nappa

Virginia Baisley Zitzow

Laura S. Parsons

Richard H. Curtis

Rupert M. Ines

Edward Fuller

The annual convention for our diocese will be held all day on Saturday, November 2.  Your convention delegates are Linda Hank and Ray Luddy.  Rev. Scottie will also be there.

In addition to worshiping together and approving the budget, we will consider a number of resolutions.  One is a resolution requesting funding for the election of a diocesan bishop, and another addresses clergy compensation.  Three resolutions are on social issues.  One is about continued support for the B-Peace Foundation that seeks to prevent teen gun violence and was founded after the murder of Jorge Fuentes, a high school senior and youth leader at St. Stephens in Boston.  The other two resolutions are about global warming, one recommending support of a legislative initiative to impose a carbon tax, the other recommending that the church divest from energy companies that contribute to pollution and global warming.  

The full text of the resolutions are posted on the bulletin board outside the sanctuary.  You can also click here to read all of the Convention materials including the budget, all resolutions, the candidates for offices to be elected at Convention and the worship materials at the diocesan website.  Please pray for the Diocesan Convention and our delegates.  If you have opinions about any matter to be considered on November 2, please feel free to talk with Linda, Ray, or Scottie.  They would love to hear from you!

Christine Camper, Kevin Cellucci, Betty Fraser, Bernice Herrick, Thomas and Henrietta Kane, Debra Katt-Lloyd, Tony Lopes, Lynn McDonald, Rheta McKinley, Alice Norman, Ken Nowakunski, Elsie Saunders, Bishop Thomas Shaw, Kevin Smith, Jake Torrisi, Ralph Ventola, Stephen Wagner, and Michael Webb.