In honor of All Saint’s Day, here is a lovely reading from Daily Strength for Daily Needs, a 19th century collection of scripture, poetry and quotes:
Let us, then, learn that we can never be lonely or forsaken in this life. Shall they forget us because they are “made perfect”? Shall they love us the less because they now have power to love us more? If we forget them not, shall they not remember us with God? No trial, then, can isolate us, no sorrow can cut us off from the Communion of Saints. Kneel down, and you are with them; lift up your eyes, and the heavenly world, high above all perturbation, hangs serenely overhead; only a thin veil, it may be, floats between. All whom we loved, and all who loved us–whom we still love no less and they love us yet more–are ever near, because they are ever in His presence in whom we live and dwell.
Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892)
photo: New College Chapel, Oxford, capturing the great cloud of witnesses