Praying Together 29th October 2023

Collect for Trinity 21 and All Saints Day

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Help us to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Holy God, you have called witnesses from every nation and revealed your glory in their lives. Grant to us the same faith and love that, following their example, we may be sustained by their fellowship and rejoice in their triumph; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Thessalonians 2: 1-8

John 1: 1-14

What Hallowtide, or ‘Hallowmas’ is: A ‘Triduum’, or ‘Three days.’

Beginning on All Hallow’s Eve: the evening before All Hallows day – a vigil of prayer, fasting and preparation for the feast.

All Hallows, or ‘All Saints’: a time of feasting and celebration of the victory and life won through Christ and those Saints and Martyrs who have kept the faith and through whom His church has been built.

All Souls: A day to remember all who have gone before, especially friends and family, with gifts of apples and ‘soulcakes’ (usually filled with sweet spices and fruit, decorated with the sign of the cross before baking) being given as alms.

Hallowtide celebrates the light of Christ that will support and shine through the dark days of Winter.

What Hallowmas is not:

Samhain: a Pagan religious festival and in many Celtic traditions, New Year’s day. While not sharing their belief, we respect those who are sincere.

As opposed to:

Halloween: An American import during which people make shedloads of money by selling tat, normally made of unrecyclable and indestructible plastic, and during which children are encouraged to beg for money with menaces to buy tooth-rotting sweets made of 100% artificial ingredients.

And worse, it has increasingly become an excuse for an insidious excuse for darkness and propagation of evil. Violent and horrific media encourages naïve people to believe that ‘it’s only a bit of fun’ when it plainly isn’t.

Experience shows, however, that addressing the above directly isn’t all that effective – if people have no appreciation from a Christian perspective, they dismiss our opinion without understanding what we say. Instead, the way to defeat the darkness is to be the light that darkness can never overcome. And love is the vehicle to shine that light.

Hallowmas is a season we should not ignore, but instead celebrate as a festival of light, in the beauty of Autumn colours and enjoying a time for creation to rest in peace. Halloween, in modern times, has become the embodiment of darkness. As Christians, we must have no part of it.