The communion of saints indirectly suggests that all people are ultimately God’s people, and that all, ultimately, are therefore saints. Saints come in an infinite variety of levels of righteousness, sanctity, and holiness. But because we are God’s, we are saints, and we have communion with everyone now alive and everyone who ever lived. God unites all of us by His spirit moving within us. We thank Him for the astonishing generosity of His nature, and now, together with all the saints, let us worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
We thank Thee, O God, for the gift of life in all its richness and diversity and possibilities. We praise Thee for Thy guidance of us throughout our lives, moving within us mysteriously and yet inexorably to seek to do Thy will and to fulfill Thy purposes for us. We are grateful for the natural world around us, without which we could not exist, for its fruitfulness and wonder and beauty.
On this day in particular we praise Thee for the communion of saints, whereby we are blessed by people all around us and by countless others who have gone before us to be with Thee in Thine eternal kingdom. We remember the giants of faith whose stories are recalled in scripture, and for all the saints who lived past the time of the Bible but before our own time, whose witness to Thee and Thy kingdom had had a permanent and positive effect of the world and on us personally. We praise Thee for people from scores of generations ago who influenced their children, and they influenced their children, and they passed on faith to their children, all the way down to our own parents, most of whom also bequeathed faith to us. When we ponder Thy grace which has shown through all the generations, we are awed by the communion of all Thy saints through all time, and we praise Thee for their fidelity, steadfastness, and devotion.
We pray for those who are entering into their final years in good health, many of whom shall nevertheless face the prospect of declining health. Give to them the patience and forbearance necessary to go through this phase of life, trusting in Thy presence with them and in the ability of others to care for them when they cannot care for themselves. We pray for those who have fought illness their entire lives, and who struggle on, looking to Thee for strength and persistence in the face of constant adversity. We pray for caregivers, who minister daily to those in need of their skills. Help all of us to help one another, so that we may fulfill the compassion Thou hast taught us through men and women in the past, and especially through Jesus of Nazareth, whom we are privileged to call the Christ. Now we pray together as Jesus taught his first disciples, saying, Our Father….