All Saints’ Day: Prayers for Children About Death
Picture by Gianna B on Unsplash
Death can be a tricky topic to broach with children, so I appreciate that the Episcopal Church provides a way to integrate it into our lives of faith through All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on November 1st and 2nd. These holy days give us language to express our feelings and help us form a theological understanding of what happens after we die, and how we continue to live in communion with those who have gone before us.
Included below are prayers I adapted for children from the Book of Common Prayer. I invite you to pray them with your child as a way of making death part of their life—not something to fear or ignore, but to accept and embrace as a final threshold we will all cross to be with God.
Take time to talk to your children about the deaths they may have experienced in their life and within your family. Listen compassionately and assure them that through death we return to God’s love, in God’s divine timing. Light candles together and name those you love and have died. Then pray the following—if your child is old enough, invite them to read aloud with you:
Dear God, all the spirits of those who loved you and have died are now with you forever in heaven! And they are joyful and happy! We give you a big thanks for what a good example they have been to us. They lived good lives and finished well. Now they are resting and refreshed in your love. May we, along with all the faithful people who have died before us, enter your perfect bliss; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Dear God, today I am remembering __________________. Thank you for giving them to me, so that I could know and love them during my life in this world. Please comfort me when I feel sad about losing them. Help me see their death as the path that took them closer to you. Help me live my life to the fullest, so that when it is my turn to die, I can join them in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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