Many christian churches at this time of year ( around the time of All Souls Day) hold a service to remember loved ones who are no longer with us.
In our parish this is done with other local churches from different denominations being involved in organising and leading it. Each priest/vicar/pastor writes to every individual or family they have had contact with throughout the year because they have taken a funeral service of a loved one or supported someone through a bereavement.
The service provides an opportunity to reflect on their memories of that person, to give thanks for their life and to light a candle in their memory. Prayers are said, hymns sung and appropriate bible readings and a short christian message is shared. It is a quiet and reflective time - families who at the time of death and funeral were still in shock or deep distress have a chance to pray, reflect and give thanks a few months later. Grief hits us all and when it does, it comes in different stages at different times and moments like these can help with the grieving process. The memorial service is a peaceful, unhurried time. Each candle is lit and carried carefully and respectfully to the alter, each person represented is named in the prayers. When the service is over, everyone is invited to spend as much time as they need looking at those candles, praying or remembering in whatever way is best for them.
Along with others I stood looking at the sea of candles at this years service, one of them representing a member of my family. It struck me that there were a lot of candles, almost as many as there were people at the service, in fact. The flames flickered quietly, consistantly and calmly. Just as the candles were all the same, the many people of different ages and from different walks of life they represented all had one thing in common that those of us present didn't have; they had all passed from this earthly life into whatever happens next. Whatever our beliefs about a life after the one we have on this earth may be, there is an awful lot we don't know about it. Even within Christian theology there are different thoughts about it. All Christians (and people of all faiths and none) believe that there is life beyond the here and now and that it continues in some form or other. Christianity teaches about Christ's death and ressurrection and we believe that through his death on the cross we have everlasting life, given freely as an act of grace.
We can't remember our life before birth. We would have felt warm, comfortable and would have been vaguely aware of some sounds. We didn't have the ability to think or try and work out where we were or that life could be any different. We couldn't possibly have comprehended the world which awaited us beyond birth, or even that birth could happen. Perhaps it is the same with the next life - we can't really comprehend a life beyond this one, much as we might like to speculate.
A word which came to mind as I looked at the candles was hope. Not the kind of hope which is inactive and cannot change things, however much you wish it could (I hope my team win the match tomorrow, or I hope an unemployed friend finds work soon), but a strong and confident hope, a hope of expectation, a looking forward in confidence that there is life beyond that which we know now. The hope that one day we would be united with those people represented by those candles, in a life we can't even begin to grasp, all made possible by a God who loves us more than we can comprened, loves us enough to face and conquer death once and for all so that we can live.
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