"For they rest from their labours": Anglican piety and the faithful departed

It is the day after All Saints' Day.  But, no, this is not All Souls' Day.  The classical Prayer Book calendar has no place for such a commemoration, for sound, coherent theological reasons.  The faithful departed are not a category apart from those whom we celebrated yesterday, "thy blessed Saints" who have entered into "those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee".

This conviction finds its defining expression in the commemoration of the faithful departed in the Prayer for the Church Militant:

And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.

The quiet, abiding hope of these words, entirely without urgent petition or fearful concern, encapsulates the Church's prayer at the graveside, quoting Revelation 14:13: "for they rest from their labours".  By the merits of Christ, this is true for us all.  

And so all the faithful departed are commemorated on All Saints' Day.  There is no need for an All Souls' Day to especially petition for them. "For they rest from their labours."

This quiet, abiding hope has shaped the hymns in which Anglican piety celebrates the Communion of Saints.  These hymns, reflecting the commemoration of the faithful departed in the Prayer for the Church Militant, behold the Church Militant (the Church on earth) and the Church Triumphant (the Church in heaven): there is no third category, no Church expectant, needing our prayers in purgatory.

We see this in the most beloved of hymns associated with All Saints' Day, William Walsham How's 'For all the saints':

Oh, blest communion, fellowship divine!

We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;

yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.

Alleluia! Alleluia!

This "blest communion" has but two parts: the Church on earth, feebly struggling, and the Church in heaven, shining in glory. Richard Mant's 'For all thy saints', reflecting the collect for All Saints' Day, similarly sets before us a vision of one communion in two parts, "earthly" and "above", with no third category: 

Thine earthly members fit

To join Thy saints above,

In one communion ever knit,

One fellowship of love.

Samuel J. Stone's 'The Church's one foundation' also shares this understanding of the Communion of Saints.  It is from the Church on earth that the "cry goes up, 'How long?'", for the faithful departed now behold "the vision glorious":

Yet she on earth hath union

  With God the Three in One,

And mystic sweet communion

  With those whose rest is won,

O happy ones and holy!

  Lord, give us grace that we,

Like them, the meek and lowly,

  In love may dwell with Thee.

Here again we have an echo of those words at the graveside, for "all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear" are at rest "with thee".

These hymns are popular and enduring expressions of Anglican piety. They embody that quiet, abiding hope of the Prayer Book's Prayer for the Church Militant and commendation at the graveside: the faithful departed are at rest, and there no torment shall touch them.  And so we commemorate them on All Saints' Day, giving thanks that they rest from their labours, partakers of the heavenly kingdom.

All Souls' Day is redundant alongside this vision.  There is no need for a particular day of prayer for the faithful departed, apart from the joyful hope of All Saints' Day.  We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.  

Prayer Book and well-known Anglican hymns: such is the stuff of Anglican piety.  In a few weeks, however, we will also experience what has become another enduring feature of Anglican piety, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.  There too we will encounter the same quiet, abiding hope found in the Prayer Book and these hymns:

Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are for ever one.

All the faithful departed are upon that other shore.  They are in that greater light.  Not awaiting it in purgatory.  Not travelling to it. Not being prepared for it.  They are there, partakers of the heavenly kingdom.

And there they rest from their labours.

(The painting is 'Church Graveyard' by Benjamin Haughton, 1865–1924.)