Arkansas' Catholic churches will pause to remember the dead next week, celebrating the saints and martyrs and praying for all the faithful departed.
Many Protestants who follow the liturgical calendar will do likewise.
All Saints Day, or the Solemnity of All Saints, is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics, so they are expected to attend Mass.
At the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock, services will be held Monday night and Tuesday. On Wednesday night at 7 p.m., the Cathedral choir will sing a Requiem by French composer Gabriel Faure during an All Souls' Day Mass.
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral choir in Little Rock will mark All Saints Day at 7 p.m. Tuesday by singing Mozart's Missa brevis in B-flat, K. 275, accompanied by a string orchestra.
Elsewhere in the city that evening at 7 p.m., Bishop Larry Benfield will preside over an All Saints Day Eucharist at Christ Episcopal Church. The evening will include the reading of a necrology, a list of people who have died, and a modern Requiem sung by the choir and composed by Canadian Eleanor Daley.
(A Requiem, Latin for "rest," offers prayers for the souls of the departed.)
Grace Lutheran Church in Little Rock will mark All Saints Day with a memorial exhibit 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday for victims of domestic violence homicide.
In the Catholic tradition, All Saints Day is a day to celebrate all of the holy ones, whether famous or forgotten, who have died and gone to heaven. They are seen, in Revelation 7:9, as "a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue."
Their example provides inspiration and examples for the faithful still on earth, according to Father Alejandro Puello, pastor at St. Anne Catholic Church in North Little Rock.
"They've been where we've been. They've struggled with what we struggle but, also, they have been able to surrender to the Lord and grow and serve and be forgiven in the same way that we aspire to be," he said.
All Souls Day, which follows on Wednesday, is sometimes referred to as the "Commemoration of All Faithful Departed." On this day Catholics pray, especially, for those in purgatory.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven."
"Our prayers," Puello said, "aid all those souls that are in that state."
It's not just those in purgatory who are remembered.
"Since we have no way of knowing who is where, we pray for everybody," Puello said.
In Catholicism, "there's a call to constantly hope for even the dead that they are not outside the reach of God's mercy," he added.
Members of Puello's parish are invited to bring pictures of deceased loved ones to display on a remembrance table. And at the Cathedral, names of the dead can be written in its Book of Remembrance.
Weather permitting, an All Souls Day Mass will be held in Little Rock at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at Calvary Cemetery. Afterward, the graves in the 150-year-old cemetery will be blessed. If it's stormy, the Mass will be held at the Cathedral.
The concept of purgatory has been rejected by most Protestants. The Episcopal Church, in its 1801 Articles of Religion, labeled it a "Romish Doctrine" that is "grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."
While recognizing All Saints Day, Episcopalians didn't add All Souls Day observations to their prayer book until 1979.
According to An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church, "popular piety felt the need to distinguish between outstanding saints and those who are unknown in the wider fellowship of the church, especially family members and friends."
While All Saints Day emphasizes global giants of the faith, All Souls Day often focuses closer to home, according to Evan Garner, vicar of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville.
"It's a day to remember those we love who died and to hold them in our hearts" he said.
St. Paul's will hold its Commemoration of All Faithful Departed at 7 p.m. Thursday, performing what it describes as "music of remembrance, love and loss."
The choir, accompanied by a chamber orchestra, will perform a Requiem by French composer Maurice Durufle.