CrossTalk: A Meditation for All Souls Day (November 2)

Photo by Einar Storsul on Unsplash

For over a thousand years, the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (also known as All Souls Day) has been observed on November 2. It’s the day after All Saints Day. That’s an altogether different holiday, but a good many Christians splice them together. 

A saint, properly speaking, is not only one who has been canonized by the church but is any person who has been made holy by the Holy Spirit through the forgiveness of sins received by faith in Jesus Christ. This is the most common way the word, saint, is used in the Bible. The Apostle, Paul, begins many of his letters with a greeting “to the saints” in that place (2 Corinthians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1 etc.).

So, it is fine to splice All Saints Day together with All Souls Day. But the latter narrows our focus further still. It considers only those saints who have remained faithful unto death; and, it gives us an opportunity to think about those who have “died in Christ,” or “fallen asleep in Jesus.”

The language of sleep as a depiction of death was used by Jesus from the very beginning of his earthly ministry. When Jairus’ daughter died, Jesus told the mourners, “The child is not dead but sleeping” (Mark 5:39 ESV). Again, when the brother of Mary and Martha died, He told his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep” (John 11:11). This usage echoes language that is already used in the Old Testament. See, for instance, Daniel 12:2 and 1 Kings 1:21.

The language of sleep is not used for the death of everyone, however. It is reserved for those who have died in the Christian faith. Their bodies rest in the grave until the last day when Jesus returns and raises them to live eternally with God. For this reason, the Church began calling her graveyards, “cemeteries.” This word comes from a Greek word that means “a sleeping place, or dormitory.”

Cemeteries are the resting place for the bodies of believers because only bodies fall asleep. Spirits and souls do not need sleep, nor can they die. Human beings, unlike either animals or angels have both a body and a soul. Their bodies sleep in Jesus while their souls go to heaven. 

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, one of the criminals crucified with him repented, believed and asked Jesus for mercy. Jesus answered, “Today you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). These beautiful and comforting words clearly declare that both Jesus and the believing thief would be together even while their bodies were laid in the tomb.

There is no such thing as “soul sleep.” Unlike the body, the souls of the faithful departed are wide awake. This is most clearly taught in the book of Revelation. Gazing into heaven, St. John reports, “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the Word of God and for the witness they had born” (Revelation 6:9). Later, he reports, “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God” (Rev. 20:4).

Christians have three great promises about eternal life. First, from the very moment any person repents of sin and trusts Jesus for forgiveness, life, and salvation, that person enters into eternal life. Second, at the moment of death the soul of that person immediately goes to be with God in heaven. Third, on the last day, when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead, each believer’s body will rise from the sleep of death and be rejoined to his soul. 

Then we, “will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1Thessalonians 4:18).