05/22/2026
Pentecost and Memorial Day: Renewal and Remembrance
This Sunday at All Souls we keep Pentecost, the great feast of the Holy Ghost, and we also pause with reverence for Memorial Day. At first glance these may seem to belong to different worlds: one to the upper room in Jerusalem, with wind and flame and the apostles speaking in new tongues; the other to quiet cemeteries, folded flags, and the solemn remembrance of those who gave their lives in war. Yet both speak to us of courage, sacrifice, and love poured out for others.
Before Pentecost, the apostles were frightened men. They had seen the risen Lord, yet still they waited behind closed doors. Then came the Holy Ghost—not as a vague religious feeling, but as the living fire of God. He gave them courage, clarity, and love strong enough to spend itself. The men who once fled from the Cross went out to preach Christ crucified and risen. Tradition tells us that most of them sealed that witness with their blood. They did not give their lives because they hated the world, but because they loved Christ, and because they loved the souls for whom Christ died.
That is where Pentecost and Memorial Day meet. The noblest sacrifice is never born merely of hatred for an enemy. It is born of love: love of home, love of family, love of country, love of the innocent, love of those who depend upon us and cannot defend themselves. The soldier who falls in the line of duty, like the apostle who dies for the Gospel, reminds us that life is not truly lived when it is hoarded for oneself. It is made radiant when it is offered.
Of course, the Church does not glorify war, nor does she confuse earthly nations with the Kingdom of God. But she does give thanks for courage, duty, and self-giving love wherever they are found. And she teaches us that all such sacrifice finds its highest meaning in the Cross of Jesus Christ, where perfect love gave itself for the life of the world.
So this Sunday we shall pray for the renewing fire of the Holy Ghost: to make us brave without bitterness, patriotic without pride, faithful without fear, and grateful without sentimentality. We shall remember the apostles who carried the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and those men and women who gave their lives for the protection of hearth, home, and neighbour.
Come and worship with us at All Souls as we keep Pentecost and Memorial Day together: Renewal and Remembrance. May the Holy Ghost kindle in us that same holy courage—the courage to serve, to forgive, to endure, to witness, and, when necessary, to give ourselves in love.
Rt Rev Clinton E. Crawshaw
