#AllSaintsDay! #AllSoulsDay! All Saints Day, also known as All Hallows, Solemnity of All Saints,[3] or Feast of All Saints[4] is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by the Catholic Church and several Protestant denominations, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. The liturgical celebration begins at Vespers on the evening of 31 October and ends at the close of 1 November. It is thus the day before All Souls Day. Hallowmas is another term for the feast, and was used by Shakespeare in this sense.[5][6] However, a few recent writers have applied this term to the three days from 31 October to 2 November inclusive,[7] as a synonym for the triduum of Hallowtide.[8] In Catholic theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Catholic Church and many Anglican churches, the next day specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached Heaven. Christians who celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day do so in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual bond between those in heaven (the Church triumphant), and the living (the Church militant). Other Christian traditions define, remember and respond to the saints in different ways; for example, in the Methodist Church, the word saints refers to all Christians and therefore, on All Saints Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation, are honored and remembered.[9] All Saints Day may originate in the ancient Roman observation of 13 May, the Feast of the Lemures, in which malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were propitiated. Liturgiologists base the idea that this Lemuria festival was the origin of that of All Saints on their identical dates and on the similar theme of all the dead
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 23:31:32 +0000
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