November 2025 (taken from The Link Magazine)

Dear All,

November is the time of year when the Church Calendar both looks back to the past and forward to the future.

We remember:

  • On 1st Nov All Saints the great fellow Christians who witnessed to God’s presence and love in the world and who are our brothers and sisters in the Faith: they pray for us and surround us with care and encouragement.
  • On 6th Nov All Souls-tide our loved ones who through death are in God’s nearer presence.
  • On 9th Nov Remembrance Sunday those in past generations who have fought and given their lives that we might be free, as well as the armed forces of our own day.

Yet there is a sense of expectation as we look forward to the coming of the Incarnation with the Sundays in November also also being the 4th, 3rd,2nd and Last Sundays before Advent, Sunday 23rd being the pivotal Feast of Christ the King.

Then, on 30th November, the cycle of the church’s year begins anew, with Advent Sunday.

Like all of us, the Church is a product of its past history: our stories make us who and what we are.

Following on from this, in the central act of worship in our churches every Sunday, in the Eucharist, we do the same. “Do this in Remembrance of Me” says Jesus, and so we do. We take the bread and take the wine and, by saying “this is My Body….this is My Blood…”, we enact the story of the past – the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ – and bring it into the present moment, the here and the now, so that He is in our midst, amongst us. The term for this in Greek (if you are still reading this you are welcome to glaze over!) is “Anamnesis” which means “remembering”, but in the concrete sense of touching base with the past, of touching base with God in His process of Salvation, so that we can know Him in the present moment, so that we then journey with Him into the future, as we will do in this coming cycle of the year.

Remembrance, All Saints & All Souls: all caught up in the power and transforming presence of the Eucharist. This is at the heart of who we are, the family and people of God.

Love Fr. John