The Celts were very conscious of the dead as the crops were gathered and the leaves were falling and so are we all.
Catholics have All Saints on November 1st and the Feast of All Souls on November 2nd.
During the whole month of November at Sacred Heart here, we chant a litany of the Saints every Sunday and we have a shrine altar that is eight feet in diameter with Christ, the Pantocrator, in the center, surrounded by the faces of loved ones who are gone. The parishioners place them there with special care and at the Sunday Mass they are incensed reverently. The dead and the living are close in November.
Death was busy this November especially among the young men. Six of them who lived locally were murdered separately. That’s the worst slaughter near here in my 32 years at Sacred Heart. May God have mercy on them all.
The lethal combination of poverty and money from drugs continually drives bloody destruction.
Each year on the last Sunday of November, we call out the names of the murdered from the previous year and pray for them. The average has been 36 for eleven years. This year 2006, it is exactly 36.
It is an annual heart wrenching ritual at Sacred Heart in Camden.
