The Commemoration of All Faithful Departed, or “All Souls” – November 2 – The Festival of the Reformation is followed each year by the Feasts of All Saints and The Commemoration of All Faithful Departed, or “All Souls”.  All Saints, November 1st, and All Souls, November 2nd, are actually quite different in theme and in their Propers.  While the final Sunday of the Church Year may be celebrated as Totenfest, the commemoration of the faithful departed of the congregation, All Souls commemorates the Christian departed of all times and places, as does the Feast of All Saints.  The Feast of All Saints focuses on joy and bliss of the Church in Glory, the Feast of All Souls reminds us that physical death is for the Christian the “last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26).  Physical death is for us the portal to life eternal.

The Feast of All Souls uses the Propers of the Requiem or funeral Mass.  Requiem is a Latin word that means “rest”, as we sing in the Introit for All Souls:  “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord…”  The historic sequence hymn for the Feast of All Souls since 1485 A.X D. is Dies Irae, paraphrased for us in the hymn “Day of Wrath, O Day of Mourning,” the Chief Hymn for All Souls.  Dies Irae is a 12th century Benedictine prayer written in rhyme that gives voice to the soul awaiting judgment.

 A right remembrance of the faithful departed is explained by Martin Chemnitz in his Examen: “Therefore the prayers of the ancients for the dead were not satisfactions for the sins of the dead, not redemptions of their souls from the fire of purgatory, but public celebrations, applications, and sealings of the divine promises about the forgiveness of sins, the repose, and the salvation of those who died piously: they were instructions and exhortations for the living; they were consolations and strengthening of the grieving; and they were declarations of kindly affections of the mind toward the departed.”  It is in this spirit, the spirit of our Lutheran fathers in the faith and the Church of the ages, that we observe the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed.