Daily Reading for November 2 • All Faithful Departed

Death has come to reveal the faith.
It has begun with us, and it will end with us.
O you who fear death, do not fear death.
It only means that one will disappear from the earth.
Who is there who can save his life and leave death aside?
We who live in the world, we are mere sojourners upon the earth.

Let us encourage our hearts in the hope of God
who once breathed the breath of life into the human body.
His ears are open to prayers; the Creator of humankind is watching;
He reigns from his high place, seeing the souls of those who die.
Turn your ears to us: upon whom else can we call?
Is it not you alone, O God? Let us be branches of your Son.

From a song composed in the Jieng Tuich dialect by Mary Alueel Garang and translated by Marc Nikkel, quoted in “Death has Come to Reveal the Faith: Spirituality in the Episcopal Church of the Sudan Amidst Civil Conflict” by Marc Nikkel, in Anglicanism: A Global Communion, ed. Andrew Wingate, Kevin Ward, Carrie Pemberton, and Wilson Sitshebo. Copyright © 1998. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org