All Saints Day
HarryCH
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Today is All Saints Day. Did you church do anything special?
HarryCH
Shipmate
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The Old-Catholic Cathedral in Utrecht (Netherlands) combined All Saints with All Souls by having the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed within the liturgy of the Eucharist. After the usual brief intercessions, some prayers were said, and then the congregation came forward to light candles and place them on tables near the altar whilst the names of those to be commemorated were read out by the priest.
Just before the dismissal, the priest reminded people that, after coffee (an important church ritual in the Netherlands!). those who wished could go with him to a nearby cemetery to sing, pray, and light candles at graves there.
I rarely seem to recognise any of the hymns they sing at Utrecht, but the closing hymn today went to a familiar tune - Darwall's 148th - usually associated here in the UK with Ye holy angels bright.
Saturday evening at the church Spanish/English service. The names of the departed were read. A Día de los Muertos altar was set up in the court yard.
It’s not ideal, but it is what it is.
“ A service of prayers and readings to remember those we have loved but see no longer”.
I brought home the service leaflet. I wish I could have stayed. The prayers and liturgy were just right.
Reading : Romans 8. 31-39.
Anthem: The peace of God - John Rutter
Hymns: Lord of all hopefulness
The King of love my shepherd is
The day thou gavest.
(BTW - it seems to me that this thread ought really to be in Ecclesiantics!)
I started watching The Book of Life, and I saw the Dia de los Muertos episode of El Tigre, and I plan to make the matzoh ball soup that both Daddy Vern and Cubby loved tomorrow, but all of that is more All Souls’ Day.
Yes. I will consult backstage
There was no service at the local church here yesterday but the church we went to in the morning had All Saints-type hymns and included those we love but no longer see in the prayers. There was also an evening service there which was a specific All Souls remembrance; I'd like to have gone but it didn't fit with the rest of our plans for the day.
Our previous church didn't mark All Saints at all and I'm appreciating being back in a tradition that does.
As we go into Lent we pray for the departed and ask them to pray for us also.
Our parish priest prays for everyone in the parish and for the faithful departed and his departed relatives and friends by name everyday.
In general, we remember the departed every Saturday and there's a 'slot' to pray for the departed in the set daily prayers if we choose to follow that.
As a sweeping generalisation I'd suggest that we tend to put more emphasis on the 'communion of saints/Saints' in time and eternity than most Christian confessions.
It's kind of 'baked-in' to our ethos as it were, and yes I know it is with the RCs and Anglo-Catholics too - but perhaps not as regularly.
We've got the icons looking at us every service so that serves as a reminder of the 'Great Cloud of Witnesses'.
I like 'For all the Saints ...' And would be happy to sing all eight verses ...
@Lamb Chopped - on the 'city choir' thing, I'm hazarding a guess here and I might be well wide of the mark, but I'm wondering whether it's a 'European' thing that has been carried over to the US and lost its original meaning.
As you'll be aware, the term 'city' tends to have a more prescriptive meaning in Europe than it appears to do 'across the Pond.'
I was surprised when I drove a priest from the US around North Wales when he'd say, 'Hey, we're coming into a city ...' when it was a village or small town.
My guess would be that in Lutheran terms a 'city' choir would be one from a large regional centre - Heielberg, or Leipzig or Stockholm, say, and that would imply a higher quality of choir than you might expect out in a small town or village.
Just a thought ...
In the Orthodox Church Calendar February 29th is St John Cassian (with the commemoration transferred to February 28th in non-leap years).
Of course we sang "For All The Saints" as our recessional hymn.
By alternative way of relief, I tried singing it to the tune of "One of us" (Eric Bazilian; and leaving out the chorus).
Ok. Which leaves me even more confused as to why @Lamb Chopped would be 'thrown' by the city thing.
If it was Gotham City Lutheran Choir, say, then what's there to be 'thrown' or nonplussed about?
Kansas City Lutheran Choir. Minneapolis Lutheran Choir. Springfield Lutheran Choir ...
That all makes sense to me. Not sure why it should 'throw' anyone so I must be missing some nuance or other.
If we had more Lutherans here than you could fit into the proverbial telephone box, then we might have Luton Lutheran Choir or Leicester Lutheran Choir, Lincoln Lutheran Choir or some such.
Yes, and your explanation is likely correct. The reason it's weird is that Lutheran groups, by and large, don't go in for identifying themselves by geography (the name of our Synod being an obvious outlier). We're far more likely to name a choir the American Kantorei or Laudamus or the Bach Society than we are to pick up the city name. To my Lutheran ears, at least, using the city name suggests a possible connection between the group and the secular city government--a sponsorship or other financial support, for instance. And given our historical emphasis on separation between church and state (two kingdom theory), this lands oddly, particularly in America.
Tl/dr: Lutherans go for arcane historical references or Latin most of the time. We shy away from city/state references in names except where there's an obvious prosaic necessity to it, as in our university system, where all the colleges carry the same name.
Doublethink, Admin
Constant attacks by super-villains, I would think. After a certain point, you’d wonder why anyone lives there anymore. “Sigh. The Joker’s putting chemicals in the water supply again, dear…”
Endowment committee hosted the coffee hour.
Sermon was on the beatitudes.
Interesting.
We tend not to have municipal sponsorship for choirs either, but if one were named after a town or city I don't think we'd immediately assume that they were sponsored by it in some way.
I'm not sure if the London Community Gospel Choir is still going nor whether it received any public funding.
A choir connected with an Anglican cathedral choir would simply be named after the cathedral.
It would generally be unusual for a church-based choir here to have much 'reach' beyond its immediate context.
@Gramps49 I'm wondering what's being 'peddled' in that font ...
What with the leaves, I thought it was flower petals…
Yes, and of course I knew that's what @Gramps49 meant.
Apologies for messing about.