ALL SAINTS DAY

Wassily Kandinsky All Saints (1913)

Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

R S Thomas (1913-2000)

 The Feast of All Saints on November 1st is a time for commemorating the countless Christians whose faithful and effective discipleship has gone largely unrecorded, and whose names are now unknown. The Welsh poet and Anglican priest R S Thomas (1913-2000) ministered for forty years to a series of small rural parishes in the Church in Wales. In his poem 'The Country Clergy' he wonderfully reflects on some of these 'saints'.

 THE COUNTRY CLERGY

I see them working in old rectories

By the sun's light, by candlelight,

Venerable men, their black cloth

A little dusty, a little green

With holy mildew. And yet their skulls

Ripening over so many prayers,

Toppled into the same grave

With oafs and yokels. They left no books,

Memorial to their lonely thought

In grey parishes; rather they wrote

On men's hearts, and in the minds

Of young children sublime words

Too soon forgotten. God in his time

Or out of time will correct this.