All Saints’ Day 		November 1
In the New Testament “the saints” means all the believers who are dedicated to God. As such, the word has connections with the dedicated believers of the old covenant. In the Christian tradition particular honour began to be paid to exceptional examples of the Christian way, especially those who died for the faith, the martyrs. So the word “saint” came to describe those who have become officially recognised by the church as in some measure fulfilling their call to be saints. In the seventeenth century Jeremy Taylor wrote:
The memories of the saints are precious to God, and therefore they ought also to be so to us: and such persons, who serve God by holy living, industrious preaching, and religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy doctrines and lives published and imitated.
The setting aside of a special day to commemorate all saints, whether known or unknown, has a complex and rather confused history. A feast in honour of “the martyrs of the whole world” was kept in the late third century in the east, and by the late fourth century there were references to such a day on the first Sunday after Pentecost. In Rome in 610 the old Roman Pantheon was consecrated as a Christian church and dedicated to “St Mary and All Martyrs” on 13 May that year. That may mark the emergence of the annual feast in the western church.
The enlarging of the feast to include not just all martyrs but all saints, and the observance of the feast on 1 November is harder to trace. Pope Gregory III (734-741) dedicated a chapel in St Peter’s in Rome to All the Saints on 1 November, and by the ninth century a feast to All Saints was being observed in England on 1 November. November 1 also seems to have been the day for observing a feast to All Saints in Ireland from about that time. It is possible that the November date began in Ireland and spread from there throughout Europe.
The universal observance of All Saints’ Day on 1 November was urged in 844 by Pope Gregory IV in a letter to the emperor Louis the Pious. Certainly, the feast had become a popular one and fixed on 1 November by the tenth century.
For Liturgical Use
Although in the New Testament “saints” refers to all Christians, the church soon gave special honour to the heroes of the faith, especially martyrs. In the early church, a feast commemorating all martyrs seems to have been observed in association with Pentecost. The extension of the feast to include all the saints and its observance on 1 November emerged some time in the eighth century. The feast allows us to express our sense of communion with all those who have gone before us, whether known or unknown, who have witnessed to their faith in Christ.
Sentence, Prayers and Readings as in A New Zealand Prayer Book - He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, page 670-672