All Souls Day

"...our religion is not a simple relation of every soul separately to God, it is a corpus mysticum in which we are all members of one another. And in this corpus mysticum it does not suffice that every soul should be embraced by the thoughts of God; it has also to be that every soul should, in its thought, embrace the other souls. For apart from this mutual embracing, it would be unintelligible why we should pray at all, either for the living or the departed. Such prayer is nothing but the exercising of our membership in the body of Christ. God is not content to care for us each severally, unless he can also, by his Holy Spirit in each one of us, care through and in us for all the rest. Every one of us is to be a focus of that divine life of which the attractive power holds the body together in one. So even in the deadness and blindness of our present existence, our thought ranges abroad and spreads out towards the confines of the mystical Christ, remembering the whole Church of Christ, as well militant on earth as triumphant in heaven; invoking angels, archangels and all the spiritual host..."

Austin Farrer: from an address 'The Villages of Heaven' published in 'Said or Sung' (The Faith Press 1960)




Jean Alain: Messe de Requiem
Raphaele Garreau De Labarre (organ), Maitrise de Garcons de Colmar diected by Arlette Steyer