Yesterday, in our church, one by one, we read the names of everyone in our church family who died this past year. After each name, a bell. Then a few seconds of silence before the next.

I’ve come to love that silence. I call to mind each person in those few seconds and I sense their presence still with us.

Yesterday was All Saints’ Day. The church has an old phrase for what that silence holds: the communion of saints. It means we belong to a family far larger than the people we can see. It stretches around the globe today, and back across every time and place, to everyone who has trusted in Christ.

One of our elders once told me it runs the other way, too. The communion of saints includes people who aren’t even born yet. People who will one day sit where we sit… 

Paul wrote of “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” (Ephesians 3:14–15)

Every family. In heaven and on earth. One family.

Maybe you’re carrying a name of your own today. Someone whose chair will be empty at the table this month. That ache is real, and nothing here asks you to hurry past it. But you are not grieving alone. And the one you miss is still held in the same love that holds you.

Today’s prayer comes from George MacLeod, who led the rebuilding of the ancient abbey on the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland. 

Prayer: Be thou, triune God, in the midst of us as we give thanks for those who have gone from the sight of earthly eyes. They, in thy nearer presence, still worship with us in the mystery of the one family in heaven and on earth… If it be thy holy will, tell them how we love them, and how we miss them, and how we long to be with them again. Strengthen us to go on in loving service of all thy children. Thus shall we have communion with thee and, in thee, with those who have gone before us. Thus shall we come to know within ourselves that there is no death and that only a veil divides, thin as gossamer. Amen.

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