All Saints’ Day: Talk to Your Children About Death
Picture by Gianna B on Unsplash
Death can be a tricky topic to broach with children. 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. Every year, these holy days give us language to express our feelings, help us form a theological understanding of what happens after we die, and remind us that 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.
Begin by taking 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 our ultimate source of love. Then, light candles together for each person you want to remember who has died. Let this lead you into praying the following prayers, and 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 (name of loved ones). 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.
After you have completed the prayers you can blow out your candles. Point out the curls of smoke and explain that you aren’t putting out the light, you are changing it. It will continue to be with you in a different form, just as the essence of those we love continue to be with us even after they die.
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