Schedule for All Saints & All Souls

Saturday 31st October: Vigil of All Saints

11:30am - Holy Rosary

Noon - Low Mass (Missal)

Sunday 1st November: ALL SAINTS DAY

8am - Low Mass (Missal)

9am - Mass

10:30am - Procession & Solemn Mass

Music for Procession & Solemn Mass:

Missa brevis - Jonathan Dove (b. 1959)

O what their joy and their glory must be - William H. Harris (1883–1973)

Psalm 34:1-10,22 - J. Marcus Ritchie (1946–1989)

Hymns:

For all the saints (Sine Nomine)

Ye watchers and ye holy ones (Lasst uns erfreuen)

O heavenly Jerusalem (All Hallows)

Jerusalem, my happy home (Land of Rest)

I sing a song of the saints of God (Grand Isle)

Monday 2nd November: Commemoration of All Faithful Departed (All Souls Day)

7:30am - Low Requiem Mass (Missal)

5:30pm - Vespers of the Dead & Necrology (Parish Columbarium)

6:45pm - Solemn Requiem Mass

Music for Solemn Requiem Mass:

Requiem, Op. 48 - Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)

Psalm 130

Hymn:

Jesus, son of Mary, fount of life alone (Adoro te, devote)



Catholics, wrote Fr Garfield, love the Saints, and therefore love and keep All Saints' Day. This year All Saints falls on a Sunday and, in keeping with Fr Garfield's exhortation, we add an additional Low Mass that morning at 8am, to allow as many as possible to keep their obligation. 

Writing to his congregation of St Mary the Virgin NYC in November of 1965 he continues: Catholics pray for the souls of the faithful, especially on All Souls' Day. Two Requiem Masses will be offered Monday 2nd, and Vespers recited in our Parish Columbarium.

One of the many things I value about our parish is our commitment to keeping weekday feasts on their proper day, allowing them to interrupt our lives and routines, and to focus our gaze on that which is above in some different and particular way. The great Feast of All Saints, and the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed (All Souls), have a long history of claiming November 1st and 2nd respectively. 

All Saints (and with many thanks to Fr Pham for some clarifications) is actually the older of the two observances, stretching back to the early cult of the martyrs; as the number of martyrs began to grow, communities started to celebrate groups of them collectively. Like many feasts (e.g., St. Michael and All Angels), this began as a dedication feast. Specifically, the dedication of the Pantheon, the temple of all the gods built by Marcus Agrippa, as the Church of St. Mary and All Martyrs by Pope Boniface IV on May 13, 609. May 13 was then kept as the Feast of All Martyrs until the 8th century when Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel in Old St. Peter's Basilica dedicated to the Savior, St. Mary, and All Saints on November 1, 735. Hereafter the Feast of All Saints began to be kept on the first day of November, first locally, and then extended universally by Pope Gregory IV as the general observance of All Saints .

Praying for the Christian dead by far precedes All Souls Day, and reaches back to very early Christianity. November 2nd's general commemoration comes principally from the great Benedictine abbey of Cluny: some scholarship places this around 998 and St Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, directing his monasteries to observe a solemn commemoration of all the faithful departed on the day after All Saints. 

By the High Middle Ages the kalendar had acquired a coherent sequence: Vigil of All Saints to All Saints to All Souls, over three consecutive days, each with its own distinctive character and grace. On All Saints the Church Militant on earth joins the Church Triumphant in heaven, in our corporate worship of God. On All Souls the Church here on earth exercises our communion with the departed through intercession - through black vestments, cemetery visits, tolling bells, prayers for our own beloved departed, and prayers for those who have none to pray for them. It is our conviction that the living can assist the departed through prayer, almsgiving, and the Eucharistic sacrifice. We are convinced that the communion between the living and the dead in Christ is real, and that our prayer is efficacious. 

All Souls largely vanished from authorised Anglican worship after the Reformation, survived in various forms, and was dramatically recovered by the Nineteenth Century Catholic Revival. Interestingly, All Souls seems to be undergoing a revival of its very own in recent years, as more and more parishes come to embrace the Commemoration, largely led by the increasing popularity of Requiem settings such as Durufle and Faure. However, to be clear: All Saints and All Souls stand in the church's liturgical year on two consecutive days to reveal two mysteries, connected yet distinct: the saints in glory one day, and then praying for the dead in charity and hope the next. All Souls cannot be transferred to the evening of All Saints or any other day (unless it falls on a Sunday, when it moves to Monday), and Requiem Masses can never be celebrated on Sundays, at least in the traditional form. Nor is All Souls' Day a concert or performance: beautiful black sets and beautiful mass settings exist only to further our task of interceding, for that is the point of the day: we do not remember the departed; we pray for them. 

So now we prepare to do our work: to rejoice, and to pray. The priests of this parish take seriously our duty of praying for the souls of your departed loved ones, and for all souls. Please submit your names to our Parish Administrator: office@stpauls-kst.com

To give the final word to Fr Garfield... God grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served him here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into his unending joy. 

- Fr Richard