Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving
for All Souls Day - aka The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed
Austwick, 4 November 2018
Choruses from ‘The Rock’ by T.S. Eliot [1]:
Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.
For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:
For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of GOD ,
For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.
And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.
For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands alone on the other side of death,
But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.
From those sober words of a great Twentieth-Century Anglican poet, let us extract one line: ‘Of all that was done that was good (in the past), you have the inheritance.’
I suspect that each of us are here tonight because we want to remember and give thanks for someone who has done good in the past: good to us, good to others, good in their character and life and work.
We are here in sadness because these loved ones are no longer with us. And we miss them.
But we might take comfort from these words, that of all the good they did, we have the inheritance. All that was good about them, we still hold close to us, we still carry with us.
Whatever you believe about life after death I’m sure you’ll be certain by now that in a very real sense the person you lose really does live on; in our memories, which recur day by day and often in the smallest details of everyday life; in our attitudes: for our own characters have been shaped and formed through our close relationship with the ones we have spent so long with that we’ve rubbed off on each other.
This is a moment in time to remember and give thanks for the little things you shared which you still savour: the times of day at home, the favourite places, pastimes, jokes and phrases.
This is a moment in time to remember and give thanks for the larger things you did together which impacted your life significantly and still do: commitments to each other and to others; decisions about how to live, where to live, how to parent or nurture, earn or learn.
This is a moment in time to hear again the voice of that loved one now departed, but not really gone: hear him or her speaking to you - what do they say about your ‘now’, and about your ‘tomorrow’.
This is a good moment for sensing that all that was good, in all of this, still is good. And that you are as held in your relationship with the departed now as you ever were; and as held in the grace of God also as you ever were.
Note
[1] An extract from Choruses from ‘The Rock’ by T.S. Eliot. See also The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems.
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