A Season for Remembering
Autumn is a season for reflecting and remembering. The skies are darkening, the nights are drawing in, and the trees are losing their leaves. Creation is winding-down in preparation for the winter. Autumn lends itself to quiet reflection, a spiritual as well as a physical hibernation. As the year draws to a close, we look back on the passing months and reflect upon what it is they have brought us, both the good and the not-so-good.
Our Pagan forebears understood this, celebrating as they did the Festival of Samhain (meaning ’summer’s end’), which incorporated both elements of the traditional harvest celebration and a time of remembering those who had crossed over the threshold from this life to the next. Early Celtic Christianity undoubtedly incorporated these themes and truths into their own calendar, from which came both the Harvest Festival and the Feast of All Saints.
Sunday 1st November is the Feast of All Saints, or All Hallows, preceded by Halloween (All Hallows Eve – October 31st) and followed directly by the Feast of All Souls’ on November 2nd. There are various interpretations ass to the meaning behind these festivals. Each Church denomination has a different slant, yet all would agree that it is a time for remembering and celebrating those who in Christ have passed on into glory. Hence, all the saints, with a small ‘c’. Some churches also use this time to remember those among their number and in the wider community who have passed away during the preceding year. This chimes in with the autumnal theme of seeding, and reminds us of Jesus’ words, “…I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ” (John 12: 24).
The following Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, a modern invention, lying as it does on the second Sunday in November, the nearest to Remembrance Day, November 11th, marking the end of hostilities in the First World War. This year saw the death at 111 years of Harry Patch, the last surviving British veteran of the killing fields of Ypres and Passchendaele. My own father visited the sites of these great battles very shortly after the First War, sending letters home to his mother, my grandmother, detailing the horrors he saw there in its aftermath.
‘Never again’ we said, yet the harsh fact remains that whilst today we live in relative peace here in Britain, wars rage across the globe, two of which involve our own armed forces. Whatever our views on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq (and these will be varied across the Winchcombe Team), Remembrance Sunday is a time for bringing to mind and before God in prayer all who have given their lives in the service of this our nation, both in the more distant past as well as in recent years and months. As I write the death count for UK military personnel lost in Afghanistan stands at 221, and in Iraq 179. On Remembrance Sunday we mourn the loss of these men and women, as we do those who have given their lives in former conflicts.
An Act of Remembrance is an act of love. Jesus calls us to not only to love our own – our brothers and sisters, our countryfolk, neighbours and allies – but also to love our enemies. “Love your enemies”, He says. On Remembrance Sunday we remember before God both friend and foe, asking God to help us to ‘forgive those who trespass against us’, remembering as we do that Jesus laid down his life for all of us, British, American, Iraqi, Afghani, Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian, Muslim, Christian, and Jew.
Revd. Keith Hitchman
Team Vicar (seconded), The Winchcombe Team of Churches
Autumn is a season for reflecting and remembering. The skies are darkening, the nights are drawing in, and the trees are losing their leaves. Creation is winding-down in preparation for the winter. Autumn lends itself to quiet reflection, a spiritual as well as a physical hibernation. As the year draws to a close, we look back on the passing months and reflect upon what it is they have brought us, both the good and the not-so-good.
Our Pagan forebears understood this, celebrating as they did the Festival of Samhain (meaning ’summer’s end’), which incorporated both elements of the traditional harvest celebration and a time of remembering those who had crossed over the threshold from this life to the next. Early Celtic Christianity undoubtedly incorporated these themes and truths into their own calendar, from which came both the Harvest Festival and the Feast of All Saints.
Sunday 1st November is the Feast of All Saints, or All Hallows, preceded by Halloween (All Hallows Eve – October 31st) and followed directly by the Feast of All Souls’ on November 2nd. There are various interpretations as to the meaning behind these festivals. Each Church denomination has a different slant, yet all would agree that it is a time for remembering and celebrating those who in Christ have passed on into glory. Hence, all the saints, with a small ‘c’. Some churches also use this time to remember those among their number and in the wider community who have passed away during the preceding year. This chimes in with the autumnal theme of seeding, and reminds us of Jesus’ words:
“…I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ” (John 12: 24).
The following Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, a modern invention, lying as it does on the second Sunday in November, the nearest to Remembrance Day, November 11th, marking the end of hostilities in the First World War. This year saw the death at 111 years of Harry Patch, the last surviving British veteran of the killing fields of Ypres and Passchendaele. My own father visited the sites of these great battles very shortly after the First War, sending letters home to his mother, my grandmother, detailing the horrors he saw there in its aftermath.
‘Never again’ we said, yet the harsh fact remains that whilst today we live in relative peace here in Britain, wars rage across the globe, two of which involve our own armed forces. Whatever our views on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq (and these will be varied across the Winchcombe Team), Remembrance Sunday is a time for bringing to mind and before God in prayer all who have given their lives in the service of this our nation, both in the more distant past as well as in recent years and months. As I write the death count for UK military personnel lost in Afghanistan stands at 221, and in Iraq 179. On Remembrance Sunday we mourn the loss of these men and women, as we do those who have given their lives in former conflicts.
An Act of Remembrance is an act of love. Jesus calls us to not only to love our own – our brothers and sisters, our countryfolk, neighbours and allies – but also to love our enemies. “Love your enemies”, He says. On Remembrance Sunday we remember before God both friend and foe, asking God to help us to ‘forgive those who trespass against us’, remembering as we do that Jesus laid down his life for all of us, British, American, Iraqi, Afghani, Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian, Muslim, Christian, and Jew.
Reprinted from Winchcombe Team Parish Magazine, November 09
