ALL SAINTS' DAY
All Saints' Day is a universal Christian Feast that honours and remembers all Christian saints, known and unknown. In the Western Church (especially Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans) it is kept on 1 November.
The Orthodox Churches observe it on the first
Sunday after Pentecost.
Ephrem Syrus (d. 373) mentions a Feast dedicated the saints in his writings. St.
Chrysostom of Constantinople (d. 407) was the first Christian we know of to
assign the Feast to a particular day: the first Sunday after Pentecost. (1)
The Feast did not become established in the Western Church, however, until the Roman bishop Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to Christian usage as a church on May 13, 609 or 610. (2)
The Feast was observed annually on this date
until the time of Bishop of Rome, Gregory III (d. 741) when its observance was
shifted to Nov. 1, since on this date Gregory dedicated a chapel in the Basilica
of St. Peter's to "All the Saints." It was Gregory IV (d. 844), who in 835
ordered the Feast of All Saints to be universally observed on 1 November. (3)
As mentioned above, All Saints Day is
celebrated by Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans However,
because of their differing understandings of the identity and function of the
saints, what these churches do on the Feast of All Saints differs widely. For
Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and to some extent, Anglicans, All Saints is a
day to remember, thank God for, but also to venerate and pray to the saints in
heaven for assistance in various ways.. For Lutherans the day is observed by
remembering and thanking God for all saints, both dead and living. It is a day
to glorify Jesus Christ, who by his holy life and death has made the saints holy
through Baptism and faith.
1
. Sermon of Chysostom, Laudatio Sanctorum
Omnium (J. P. Migne, PG I. 705-712).
2 . Dedicatio S.
Mariae ad martyres.
3 . "All Saints Day,"
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition, ed. E. A.
Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 41-42.
