All Saints would be incomplete without All Souls: the Church is one and transcends time, space and the limitations of mortality. I am looking forward to Mass this morning. We ran over the chants just before Vespers last night and the juxtaposition proved very helpful. For Catholics November is a month which confronts us with the fact of death at every turn. After All Souls we have four weeks popularly dedicated to praying for the souls in purgatory; our monastic calendar has commemorations for deceased friends and benefactors as well as deceased members of the monastic order. It is all so counter-cultural. Only a few days ago we read of the possibility of centenarians having the bodies of fifty-year olds. Why should anyone want that (unless, of course, we are all feverishly working until 100+ to pay off the enormous debt we have all incurred, courtesy of current economic policy)? Many people are afraid of death, or at least of dying. It is common to entrust the last offices to undertakers, then construct funeral services which try to avoid all mention of death, sometimes lapsing into an embarrassed "celebration" of something, certainly someone, that never was. Perhaps that is why unacknowledged grief, the sheer impossibility of grieving in our society, wreaks so much havoc. A stiff upper lip needs a wobbly lower one if we are to remain human. Happily, in the monastery we are much more matter-of-fact about death and the business of dying. We prepare our dead for burial ourselves, and the Requiem Mass and funeral rites speak of hope and penitence, joy and sorrrow in equal measure. If we live by the mercy of God, do we not also die by His mercy, too? That is, I trust, a comfortable thought for the morning of All Souls.