I think folks were mislead in my last post. I mostly talked about Reformation Day, which is Ocotber 31. Martin Luther started the reformation in the church that was the basis for Reformation Day.
All Saints Day is November 1. In fact, the name for our Halloween holiday comes from All Saints Day. Saints are blessed or "hallowed" people. Therefore the night before All Saints Day is known as All Hallows Evening, which has been shorted to Hallows E'en, and then shortened further to Halloween.
There are official saints in the Catholic Church, but we Protestants believe that all Christians can be saints. All Saints' Day is held, not only to remember Saints, but also to remember all those that have died that were members of the local church congregation. Yesterday in our church, they named every member who had died in the past year.
In many Protestant churches, the word "saint" is used more generally to refer to anyone who is a Christian. This is similar in usage to Paul's numerous references in the New Testament of the Bible. In this sense, anyone who is within the Body of Christ (i.e., a professing Christian) is a 'saint' because of their relationship with Christ Jesus. (I got this from Wikipedia, folks.)
Mercy, I didn't mean to go into a lecture!
You may now go on with your regularly scheduled broadcast. Thank you for your support.
(I just remembered a funny from church about saints. During the children's sermon, the pastor asked the assembled children if they could name any saints. One boy's hand flew up. "The New Orleans Saints!" he announced proudly. Everyone roared.)
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Yes, I knew that "All Saint's Day" went back much further in it's history than when Martin Luther put the note on that door, but it still makes for an interesting history.
ReplyDeleteI just didn't want to sound like I was correcting you in my comment on your last post, LOL! Especially because I'm not an expert on "All Saint's Day" and I really didn't want to spend my time researching that much about it...LOL! I wanted to look at the fabulous blog posts that I'm behind on, LOL!
WEll, it's off to get started on the day!
Hope you have a good one, my dear!
Ah these Saints, there are so many of them! Yesterday we celebrated All Saints Day in the morning and had our All Souls service the evening, it was a very busy day! In the nearest city to us we have a famous Football Club called "The Saints" and so that is what people talk about in this area - so I could relate to the little boys comment!
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