1. Celebrating the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls.

2. The Church celebrated the feast of All Saints yesterday.

3. So who is a saint?

4. What comes to mind when you hear the word 'saint'? Can you give one or two examples of people that you regard as saints?

5. halo

6. Saints are holy, but they are not freaks or exceptions. They are human beings like you.

7. In the Bible, all believers are saints. All men, women and children, born or unborn, beautiful or plain, are holy, because they are made in the image of God.

8. On the feast of All Saints the Church celebrates all those nameless human beings who during their lives loved God and neighbour and after death now share in God’s divine life in heaven. Some of these saints probably lived in your street, went to your school and are even related to you!

9. At THE BIG ASSEMBLY in Twickenham, Pope Benedict invited all the young people of the UK to become saints. Listen again to what he had to say.

11. “Once you enter into friendship with God, everything in your life begins to change.” Pope Benedict XVI, September 2010

12. How fortunate are we! We can use our prayers to help the Holy Souls on their journey to heaven. Consider those who have died, those you knew and those you have heard of: Aylan Kurdi, RIP.

13. May the souls of the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God, Rest In Peace and Rise in Glory. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual peace shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

14. Today, dear friends in heaven, we celebrate your feast. We celebrate again the feasts of all the saints we know, and whom we honour day by day through the year. But we also honour today all the saints in heaven whom we do not know. Help us to see the opportunities for holiness that fill our everyday lives. Help us to see, too, in the beauty of the world in which we live, some slight mirroring of the eternal beauty which the saints now see, as they gaze on God. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

15. And finally…. Halloween nonsense. We believe that when any human, of any race, religion, good life or bad life dies, they are welcomed by God into heaven. We believe that if that human soul does not feel ready to meet God they choose to prepare themselves to meet God in purgatory, the Holy Souls, they need our prayers to help them. We therefore do not believe in ghosts, ghouls, zombies, vampires or other nonsense; but they can make fun stories, and what we laugh at doesn’t scare us!