November 1st we celebrate all the saints, the faithful believers, who have come before us. On November 2nd, the Day of the Dead, or All Souls’ Day is celebrated. Like other originally religious feasts, it has also taken on secular, macabre meanings. It has become Halloween, Part Two in some cultures.
For the Christian, All Souls’ Day is all about remembering our loved ones who have passed before us and entered the eternal realm–we pray that is Heaven. If they confessed Jesus as Lord, then it is a day of celebration and rejoicing because they have crossed over into a life without pain, suffering, disease and death. They are in paradise forever.
We, who are not yet there, can rejoice in the rest – the rest of our lives knowing we, too, will one day be in Heaven with them and our Lord. We can also rejoice in the eternal rest our loved ones now bask in, and be thankful their earthly battle, no mater how brief or long, is over.
Not sure where they are now? I asked God that about a relative who I wasn’t sure ever crossed the threshold into accepting Jesus as her Savior before she took her final 
gasp of breath on earth. As if He sat next to me, I heard the Lord whisper, “She saw my light, believed, and fell into my arms.” In that immeasurable minute between temporal and eternity, I truly know our Lord, who Scriptures states does not want one soul to be lost, will try one last time to convince His creation that he or she is His child. Yes, some will deny Him even then. But seeds of faith, planted decades ago, can suddenly become beanstalks in the rays of His glory.
O ETERNAL Lord God, who holdest all souls in life; Vouchsafe, we beseech thee, to thy whole Church in paradise and on earth, thy light and thy peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served thee here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into thine unending joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. BCP 1928
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