I had the blessing of serving as altar guild this morning to prepare the altar for the Wednesday Noon Eucharist. As I placed the missal stand on the altar I noticed, for the first time, the engraving on it. Perhaps I should note a certain past ambivalence toward memorial plaques in churches — a “holy” indifference with a slight tipping of the scales toward the negative. But this engraving moved me deeply and lifted my heart up to God. I have no idea who Malcolm Herbert Burgess was in this life, only that he died so very young (twenty or twenty-one), that he was an altar server at St. Peter’s Church in Canton, IL for seven years, and that someone loved him enough to want him remembered in the fellowship of the saints at the altar of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I paused in my altar preparation to pray:

Almighty God, with whom the souls of the faithful who have departed this life are in joy and felicity: We praise your holy Name for all your servants who have finished their course in your faith and fear, especially Malcolm Herbert Burgess; and we most humbly pray that, at the day of resurrection, we and all who are members of the mystical body of your Son may be set on his right hand, and hear his most joyful voice: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Grant this, O merciful Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 679).

In that moment, there was a strong sense of the Communion of Saints, of the continuity of the Church, of the immanence of the transcendent. The plaque’s first words are “In Memoriam,” and in a sense that is true. But it is inadequate. Perhaps better would be “In Thanksgiving For” or, better still, “In Communion With.”