North Staffs LMS

Masses at O.L. of the Assumption, Swynnerton on All Saints and All Souls Day:

All Saints, Fri. 1 Nov – Low Mass 6 pm  (Holy Day of Obligation)

All Souls, Fri. 2 Nov  - REQUIEM MASS  10 am

Also:

Article by the N. Staffs Rep in 'Oremus' Nov. 2017 may be of interest:

SOULFUL SEASONAL THOUGHTS                            (or ‘NOVEMBER THOUGHTS’)

    November is a month that begins following a challenging day in the church calendar, or rather an evening: All Hallows’ Eve.  For generations has there not been something spooky about it?  Do those gravestones that local people become so familiar with throughout other days of the year suddenly acquire a disturbing symbolism after dusk, an uncomfortable reminder of grim inevitabilities?  Typically, the shopping malls pick up on the American idea of Halloween and encourage the buying of pumpkins to make scary faces, while the film industry for years has cashed in on the idea of horror films associated with this particular date in the calendar.  All this distorts and undermines the significance of the event and spreads misconception.  Yet the following day is a wonderful occasion, the Feast of All Saints. 

   The thing about this Feast Day however, is that it celebrates the blessed faithful whose souls are already in Heaven.  But not all the souls of those buried in hallowed ground are with them; many we can infer from the teachings of the Church are waiting in Purgatory for the day of release into eternal bliss.  And the month of November is dedicated to these souls as much as to those in Heaven, and in recognising this, we remember our own personal and collective link to all these souls, although not just on their Feast Day on the second of the month.

   In connection with this, we have to remind ourselves that since so much has been deliberately or accidentally sidelined in the pulpit and classroom teaching of the Catholic Faith in the last fifty years, many worshippers are not aware of, or have forgotten, a most important three-tiered   structure of Christ’s mystical Church: that it is comprised of all its members, living and dead.  In Heaven it is the Church Triumphant.  On earth as we fight to keep the faith against all the distractions and temptations to abandon practice and belief, it is the Church Militant.  In Purgatory, hence the name, those who “have fought the gallant fight” to quote Fr. Faber’s hymn, undergo whatever is involved in the removal of sin.  They are the Church Suffering.  And so we might particularly think of these souls dependent on all our prayers in this month of November.

   Of course as we know so well, each month, indeed each day, can offer reasons and examples for the faithful to talk of how the Church is suffering in these present times.  But in remembering the Church Suffering in the context of the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant, perhaps November gives it all an extra focus.  There is a sense of ending, echoing those grave thoughts with which the month begins, as the final season of the Church’s year closes and we move into Advent: the time of the promise of things to come.  The black vestments of commemorative Requiem Masses annually held in November are laid aside for the emergence of the rose coloured ones for the services leading to the birth of Our Lord, and those things to come: joy, suffering. and redemption.