Prayer for the Day

by Revd Canon David White

1st November 2026 - All Saints' Day

We praise and thank you, Holy Spirit of God,
for the men and women you have called to be saints;
from your first, fallible frightened friends
who followed you to Jerusalem,
through the centuries of discovery and growth,
people of every class and temperament
down to the present day.
We praise you, Holy Spirit, for calling us
to serve you now,
for baptizing us to represent you
in this broken world.
Help us to be Christ’s united body to heal and reconcile;
help us to share Christ’s life with everyone.. Amen.

This prayer is taken from the New Zealand Prayer Book which is the official Anglican prayer book for Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. It combines traditional Anglican spirituality and is the main prayer book for the Anglican church in these places. It provides liturgies for both private devotion and public worship.

Today is All Saints’ Day when the Church throughout the world offers thanks not only for all those whose names fill calendars or prayer books, but also those unknown followers of Christ who, since the earliest times of the Christian faith down to the present day, have worshiped, loved and stumbled their way towards God. This day is not a celebration of perfection and the word ‘saint’ does not imply someone who is superhuman or unreachable. All of the saints, both those we know of and those about whom we know nothing, who lived truly Christ-like lives, were also invariably deeply human – flawed, questioning, broken – and still carrying within them the light of Christ.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in his journals that this is “a day I peculiarly love”. This prayer is inclusive of all, right down to the present time for we all have the potential to be saints.