All Souls Day Service
On Saturday, November 2nd at 11am a special service will take place to remember those whom we love but see no more. This is not just for members or families of those who are buried here at St. Helen’s but is open to anyone who has lost loved ones. The service will take place in the church and there will be candles available for people to place on graves of those buried here in our cemetery afterward. There will also be an opportunity to write names on ribbons to place these on the holly trees or on the fences of the cemetery.
What is All Souls?
An excerpt from the book 'For All the Saints'
All Souls 2 November
The Commemoration of All Faithful Departed — Memorial
On this day we call to mind all the faithful departed who are now with God in Christ Jesus. We especially remember all those who have touched our own lives, and the men and women of our own parish [or community] whose good works have sustained and enhanced the ongoing life of our Christian
community.
The Church has kept this memorial of all the faithful departed since the eleventh century, when it also began to celebrate the feast of All Saints. The Church believed that the souls of departed saints were immediately taken into the presence and full glory of God, while all other departed souls still had to undergo some healing and growth before they could be strong enough to bear the radiance of God’s face. Out of this belief grew the medieval doctrine of purgatory, which taught that there was an intermediate state between death and glory, when souls were purged of the effects of those sins which still marred their wills and affections. When the Church of England reformed its doctrine and worship in the sixteenth century, it rejected “the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory ... [as] a fond thing vainly imagined.” The Anglican tradition has not withdrawn that criticism, but over the centuries we have learned to believe what we have prayed in the Burial Office — that the good work which Almighty God began in the faithful departed may be perfected unto the day of
Jesus Christ. For growth in perfection must be infinite because our perfection is communion with the infinite God. So we magnify God’s power by confessing that the divine mercy continues to perfect the souls of the departed according to the measure of eternal life revealed in Jesus Christ.