All Souls November 2, 2024, Columbarium noon, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church
Last Sunday, one of our youth approached me and said, “It has been three years today!” Immediately, I knew he was talking about the death of his grandmother three years ago. I suddenly realized how our youth and children are just as vulnerable to grief as we adults are and may be better at expressing it than we are. I responded by telling him that just mentioning the anniversary of his grandmother’s death was honoring her. His being at the church she loved was honoring her.
Honoring and celebrating the lives of those we love who have died are significant ways of working through grief. We remember their love. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we hear, “Love never dies.” Their love, which was given to us as a gift from God, is still here. This love never dies. Barkley’s selection for the December Rector’s Book Club is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. At the memorial service in New York for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, British Prime Minister Tony Blair read these closing sentences of Thornton Wilder’s novel. “There is a land of the living,/ and a land of the dead,/ and the bridge is love,/ the only survival, /the only meaning.”
We honor our loved ones who have died by remembering and feeling that love. I told our young friend about today’s workday and the service where Saint Mark’s honors all whose ashes are in this columbarium, including his grandmother.
We still have more ways to honor and celebrate the lives of those in our congregation. Today, we placed flowers on each grave in this columbarium. On Sunday, at the All Saints service, the celebrant at the Eucharist will pray for those at Saint Mark’s who have died in the last year. All the names of those in this columbarium will be read Sunday afternoon at four here in the columbarium, followed by the Faure Requiem by our choir in the church.
There are so many other ways to remember those we loved who died. We write letters and talk to them. We do things with others we once did or planned with our loved ones. We try new things. We tell stories about our loved ones and show pictures, especially to our children. //
“The communion of saints links us with our loved ones who have gone before – and because this union is in Christ, it cannot be broken, even by death. This is a communion at the very deepest level, beyond language, heart speaking to heart.1”
We are here today to honor the life, the love, the support of each member of Saint Mark’s interred here. Love is all we have to contribute to this life that will be lasting. Love is all we will carry with us into the life of the resurrection. Love is the bridge between these two worlds.
Today, we celebrate the love from so many here in Saint Mark’s Columbarium, known and unknown.
1Br. Geoffrey Tristram SSJE Society of St. John the Evangelist
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com