A Prayer for Remembering Saint Congregations
This year, as we remember individual saints on All Saints Day, we at Good Friday Collaborative invite you to join us in remembering saint congregations. The following is a prayer practice developed specifically for the remembrance of congregations that have concluded ministry. You are also invited to add a remembrance to our 2022 Saint Congregations Remembrance Wall.
You are invited to remain prayerful and quiet for as long as you wish. Allow the memories of your saint community to wash over you. If there are tears, welcome them. If there is laughter, welcome it. If you feel led to light a candle, visit a sacred place, be in nature, or connect with others, then follow God’s leading in your heart, giving thanks for those who formed and shaped you and the communities which spur you onward still. Be blessed in your remembering, knowing that God is here – around us and within us. God is here - across all time and space, knitting together God’s beloved family, the great cloud of witnesses, who go with us to transform the world in love.
God is here – around us and within us. God is here – across all time and space.
Take a moment to observe the holy. Take time to observe the world. Listen for the sounds around you.
Feel your own breath as you steady yourself in this time and place. Relax your body and open yourself to the love of God that is as present as your breath.
Today is a day for remembering. Today is a day to honor the work of those communities which have formed us in faith, the places that have taught us how to live and love. Today we remember the saints and the saint communities who make us who we are.
Holy One, we offer these words, this quiet, these noises, our very breath, as recognition of your love for us. We offer our lives into your hands, knowing that in Christ there is no beginning and no end, only Love.
Today as we remember, we give you thanks for saint communities that have formed us and shaped us. We remember what it was like to be present in those spaces. We remember the feelings we had. We remember the sights and sounds. We remember the ways we were invited to allow our souls to show up and encounter you in each other.
Today as we remember, we give thanks for the holy ground on which we walked with you and with one another. We give thanks for moments of joy and for moments in which we were carried through our brokenness. We give thanks for your very presence that draws us in and holds us close. For the gift of being in sacred space.
Today as we remember, we give thanks for the people who call those sainted places home and all those who gathered in safety within those walls. We give thanks for teachers and pastors, for mentors and colleagues and friends. We give thanks for the people you called together, in a particular time and place, to be family, to be the church together.
Today as we remember, we give thanks for the gift of tears. For those we shed together in our saint communities, for those we’ve shed since that community has taken on a new form. We give thanks for the gift of authentic love and faith that takes on new life, even now.
Sometimes we long to return to those days – to those sacred places, to those holy moments, to those beloved people – and all we can do is offer them all back to you, with gratitude for your giving them in the first place.
And so today as we remember, we offer our lives to you. Lives that have been shaped by the saints who have loved us and taught us, corrected us and challenged us, rejoiced with us and formed us in the faith. Today we offer ourselves to you, trusting in the promise of new life not yet seen, believing that we carry forward pieces of these beloved communities and people with us, in our hearts and our memories, but also with our lives as we pass our faith on to others.
Holy God, we remember. We remember. And we give thanks for the gift of saint communities, which shaped us and shape us still. For all the saints and the saint communities you bless us with, we give thanks.
Amen.
