All Souls-All Faithful Departed
O God, the Maker and Redeemer of all believers: Grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable benefits of the passion of your Son; that on the day of his appearing they may be manifested as your children; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Collect for the Day, Nov. 2
Lesser Feasts and Fasts
When we pray, as we do in the Collect for Day for Nov. 2, the feast day of All Souls, we are praying to a God who is “the Maker and Redeemer of all believers.” This is not a paradox; it is a contradiction!
We maintain in the Nicene Creed that God has made everything that is, seen and unseen. It seems, however, that we pray to a God who is “the Maker and Redeemer of all believers.” What happened to everyone else? Well, they went the way of All Souls. Now, we pray only for the faithful departed; everyone else be damned - literally. What happened to our confidence that at least one of the “unsearchable benefits of the passion” is that the passion of Jesus is “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world?” (1 John 2:2)
The Prophet Isaiah proclaimed that everyone is born of God and everyone is gathered up in God at death:
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. (Isaiah 25: 6-7)
The point which scripture seems to make repeatedly is that everything and everyone belongs to God always. It is not ours to judge who will be “in” and who will be “out.” Let us be reminded on this feast day, as we pray for All the Faithful Departed, that, indeed, all things and everyone belong to God; thus believing, we may see the world and each other anew!
