Three services this Autumn will encourage remembrance here at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, starting with All Souls’ Day on 30 October.

A candlelit Sung Requiem for All Souls’ Day, where we give thanks for and remember departed loved ones, friends and family, is at 3.30 pm on Sunday 30 October. Small card crosses are available at the Cathedral, now and on the day, to write the names of departed loved ones you wish to remember at the service. Please bring them on the day when there will be the opportunity to light candles and place names of loved ones on the large Cross of Remembrance.

Then, on 11 November at 10.45 am a Remembrance Service takes place at the Cathedral led by King Edward VI School. Poppies and crosses are placed on the memorials in the cathedral of former KEVI students whose lives were lost in previous wars. Following this on Sunday 13 November everyone is welcome to attend the Choral Mattins Remembrance Service, led by the Cathedral Choir, at an earlier time of 10.00 am, before the wider Civic Remembrance Day Parade on Angel Hill. The service of Mattins is one of the ancient ‘Hours’ of the monastic day, and forms a prayerful link with our Benedictine roots on the site of the former Abbey of St Edmund. Musical settings of the service have been written by composers down the centuries, especially since the Reformation. It is in that tradition that we worship as we remember and give thanks for those whose lives have been scarred by war and those who have given their lives in the cause of our freedom, justice and peace.