Some of you already know the difference between the Feast of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls. Some of you may already be saying, "It's the Feast of All Saints and All Souls." Some of you may think we're already all saints, while some of you know that becoming a saint takes a canonization process that most of us would not pass.
Briefly, in an earlier time, the Feast of All Saints on Nov. 1 would celebrate all the dead, while the Feast of All Souls on Nov. 2 would celebrate the people who had died in the past year. I always think of the medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; when Gawain leaves for his appointment with the Green Knight on Nov. 2, it would have a resonance for medieval readers that it doesn't have for today's students.
In many ways, this past year has made medievalists of all of us--after the events of 2020, most of us are much more conscious of death and the fragility of life than we have been, although probably not as much as we would be if we lived in the medieval age. Perhaps we are more aware of life's precarious nature--more aware now than we might have been in 1996, say, and more than your average medieval person. Most of us have experienced a much wider range of options than your average medieval person, and we might have once believed that the precarious nature of our options was a feature of an earlier time, not ours.
I know that my losses are small, compared to those that so many others have suffered. My loved ones are still with me on this side of the grave. My academic programs (those I take, those where I teach, those where I'm the chief administrator) are still intact--different, but intact. I still have employment and a house, as do those I love.
On this Feast Day of All Souls, let me amend the traditional prayer: "May the souls of the faithful departed and all of our souls through the mercy of God rest in peace."
1 comment:
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