Church letter

October 2026

Click for the church letter from September 2026

All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day

From Common Worship: Times and Seasons. The Archbishop’s Council 2006:

No Christian is solitary. Through baptism we become members one of another in Christ, members of a company of saints whose mutual belonging transcends death:

One family, we dwell in him,
one Church, above, beneath;
though now divided by the stream,
the narrow stream of death.

(Charles Wesley’s hymn: Let Saints on Earth in Concert Sing)

All Saints’ Day and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed on All Souls’ Day both celebrate this mutual belonging. All Saints’ Day celebrates men and women in whose lives the Church, as a whole, has seen the grace of God powerfully at work. It is an opportunity to give thanks for that grace, and for the wonderful ends to which it shapes a human life; it is a time to be encouraged by the example of the saints and to recall that sanctity may grow in the ordinary circumstances, as well as the extraordinary crises, of human living.

The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed celebrates the saints in a more local and intimate key. It allows us to remember with thanksgiving before God those whom we have known more directly: those who gave us life, or who nurtured us in faith.

As a community we will celebrate All Souls’ Day once again this year. We will gather with a common bond of remembering our own loved ones who have died; those whom we miss dearly. Giving thanks for their lives, and thanks that they were and will forever remain a deep part of our lives. The only difference this year is that the service will take place at St Nicholas Church, Sandhurst. The service begins at 7.30pm on Monday 2 November, with refreshments and fellowship from 7pm.

As we gather, apart from hymns, scripture and prayer, the names of loved ones will be read out at the service. There will be an opportunity, if you wish, to come forward and light a candle in memory. The names of those whose funeral, memorial service, cremation or interment of ashes have been conducted in the benefice of Benenden and Sandhurst in the last three years will be read out. I know that there are many others whose names people wish to be remembered: please email our parish administrator Cathy Baker on benendenchurch@gmail.com and let her know.

(If we read out every name of all the funerals we have conducted during my 13-year incumbency we would be reading out over 500 names. Hence the ‘three-years’ plus additional names limit.)

Please come along to this peaceful service where we remember loved ones from whom we are, as Charles Wesley wrote, “now divided by the stream, the narrow stream of death”.

Revd David Commander, Rector