Member-only story
As background, the Episcopal Church uses a governance structure that features a Vestry, roughly a dozen church members elected by the congregation. I am in my second term on the Vestry at Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati. In our current practice, each month a member of Vestry is asked to lead a reflection at our meeting. Typically this involves selecting a relevant or poignant Bible passage, musing on the relevance or poignance of the passage to the member’s life experience, and a question to prompt further discussion among the group.
November was my month to offer a reflection. The first Sunday in November is used to celebrate All Souls Day. This service is always accompanied by the necrology — a reading of the names of those who died this year in our congregation, and anyone else who has died that someone from the congregation enters on to the list.
One of the Bible readings on this year’s All Souls Day was from The Wisdom of Solomon, chapter 3, verses 1–9.
“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be a destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they have been punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God has tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he…
