Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
October 26, 2025
Requiem Sunday, 2 Timothy 1:1-14
In you, O Lord, have we taken refuge; for the sake of your name, lead us and guide us. Amen.1 From Psalm 31.
The second letter to Timothy, along with First Timothy and Titus, comprise the “Pastoral Epistles.” While in our art history courses “pastoral” referenced a rural landscape, in the Church we appeal to the Latin pastor’s more specific meaning as “shepherd” – Jesus as the Great, Good Shepherd, and we as God’s lambs. “Pastoral Care” refers to our support and nurture of one another in the shepherding spirit of Christ.
Thereby, pastoral care is not spiritual direction, even as we found such relationships upon God’s hopes – hopes not only for those we serve, but for Trinity Church and the whole body of Christ. Likewise, pastoral care is not psychotherapy, even as it nurtures resilience and often includes deep, meaningful sharing. And pastoral care is not nursing, even as it includes attention to those who are sick or grieving, recovering from surgery or welcoming a newborn. Pastoral care is a particular form of self-sacrificial ministry – cruciform in the model of Jesus’ care for us; we set ourselves in someone else’s situation, and we give away a piece of ourselves.
Second Timothy offers an intimate witness of pastoral care.
Scholarly consensus receives this letter’s attribution to Paul as pseudepigraphal, yet as the authentic Pauline epistles address communities in crisis or conflict, we readers may infer that the author writes to Timothy during a time of need. Read with this concern, the letter offers remarkably thoughtful care.
The opening address of Timothy as “beloved child”2 2 Timothy 1:2. announces affection – even a parental attention – and the appeal to Timothy’s tears does more than purposefully pull heartstrings: centering that recollection, the caregiver acknowledges Timothy’s vulnerability and confirms their willingness to see Timothy and to engage him in his tenderness. The author then offers affirmation of Timothy’s “sincere faith,” and reminds Timothy of his connection to the “faith that first lived in [his] grandmother, Lois, and [his] mother, Eunice.”3 2 Timothy 1:5. The caregiver recalls these family members by name, before reiterating their earlier tribute to Timothy: “[a faith, Timothy, that] I am sure [lives in you, as well].”4 Ibid. By reminding Timothy of these intergenerational connections, the caregiver’s affirmation lands with more force: not only do I love and admire you, I loved and admired your family, too … and the best I knew in them, Timothy, I see in you.
While Timothy may be feeling isolated or lonely, the author reminds him that his faith binds him in a Love stretching across time and space. And see how the author neither encumbers Timothy with their need to be needed nor tacitly dismisses Timothy’s experience with only glib reassurances. Instead, they approach Timothy with utter seriousness, and their thoughtfulness expresses their love – the care with which they write confirms the sincerity of their concern.
The keeping of “All Souls Day” bears a complicated history in Christian tradition. The Church altogether ceased the remembrance in the middle of the Sixteenth Century because of the controversial sale of indulgences – though Rome would eventually inch back toward the practice. A 1968 enchiridion clarifies the “Requirements for Obtaining a Plenary Indulgence on All Souls:
“Visit a church and pray for souls in Purgatory.
“Say one ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Apostles Creed’ in [your] visit to the church…
[and like household limits on the best Black Friday deals,] “You may gain one plenary indulgence a day.”5 Several of the articles I read link to this post as a source, so I will do the same.
These devotions’ focus on the benefits to the penitent rather than the cruciform model of Jesus’ care undermines their pastoral purpose. Aiming for a renewal in spirit and substance, the feast returned to the Church of England in the Nineteenth Century, during the days of the Oxford Movement. While appointed in our Episcopal calendar for November 2, we at Trinity Church commemorate “All Faithful Departed” (as the Church now names the feast) with the praying of a Requiem mass, customarily celebrated on this, the Sunday before All Saints.
Today’s liturgy includes prayers, songs, and the reading of the Necrology, a litany of those from this parish family who have died during the last year, as well as other relatives and friends whose remembrance has been invited by members of our parish. We recall those who have died by name, and our thoughtfulness about today’s worship expresses our love; indeed, the care with which pray, our care to move beyond our own needs alone, confirms the sincerity of our concern.
Today’s Requiem enlivens our pastoral care of one another, naming our connections to God and to the Body of Christ across all time and space – not so different from those personal connections the author of our epistle so lovingly enlivens with Timothy. For all of us who share in the Communion of Saints – they in light, and we on earth – all of us share in God’s enduring Love.
Indeed, when any one of us dies in the love of Jesus Christ, we are not lost, but are received into God’s nearer company. The Catechism in our Book of Common Prayer explains, “We pray [for the dead], because we still hold them in our love, and we trust that in God’s presence [we] who have chosen to serve [God in this life] will grow in … [this] love, until [we see the Divine].”6 From “An Outline Of The Faith,” The Book Of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 861-862. Or as Timothy’s caregiver writes, “This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of [Christ], who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light …”7 2 Timothy 1:9-10.
At times, religion comes more easily to me than faith. Even so, believing in Love’s endurance requires no spiritual magic for me. As surely as every year lengthens my litany of friends and family who have died, their deaths have not diminished my love for them. While I miss them – can miss them achingly, can feel isolated and lonely, can join my tears with Timothy’s – I still love them. Our time together remains as near as a song, or a scent, or a place, and I believe in the love conjured by those memories, there is God – and where God is, they are … different, of course, but meaningful, real. Just as my love for them endures, I believe their love for me endures, and that our love is of consequence to the Creation from its foundation and until its fulfillment … that when all else passes away, the love we profess on this All Souls will still be.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we guard this good treasure entrusted to us, with grateful hearts and gracious lives.
Amen.