Remembering Our Ancestors | Lecture by Branden Sablan

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About the Lecturer

Branden Sablan grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, and has worked on Navy ships since 2001. His lifelong curiosity about both science and spirituality led him to explore many different religions before discovering metaphysics. Branden found the Chapel in October 2024, became an active member two weeks later, and was baptized by Rev. Bill Whitley that November. Since then, he has felt a strong calling to serve. You can often find him supporting Sunday Services and the Psychic Fair in person, as well as opening the Chapel on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays for our Spiritual & Psychic Development class, helping others join both in person and online. Branden serves on the board of directors as the vice president and is a Chapel Spiritual Healer.

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Opening Reflection: Time, Legacy, and Love

Welcome everybody. Good morning. How's everybody doing? So today is November first. All right now. So there's a few holidays celebrated on this day. I'm gonna talk about them.

As we gather today in this sacred space, we turn our hearts towards a reflection on time, legacy, and love. Around the beginning of November, traditions across the world invite us to pause, look back, and acknowledge our deep connections to those who came before us. Through Dia de los Muertos, All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

Let us quiet our minds and open our hearts as we explore how memory shapes who we are and how we live today. Today I invite us to think about someone whose physical presence is no longer here, but whose influence still lives within us. It might be a parent, a grandparent, a partner, a child, a friend, or a teacher. Perhaps it is someone who helped you through a difficult season or someone who believed in you before you believed in yourself.

Picture their face. Remember their voice. Perhaps you can almost hear their laugh or recall something they used to say.

How remarkable it is that a person can be absent from a room and still occupy such a meaningful place in our lives. Their influence appears in the food we prepare, the stories we tell, the values we practice, and sometimes even the expressions we use without realizing where they all came from. We remember because they lived, and because they lived, something in us is different.

Around the beginning of November, three observances invite people to acknowledge that connection. Dia de los Muertos, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. These observances have different histories and religious meanings, yet each makes room for a question that reaches across cultures. For our metaphysical community, that question opens a doorway into remembrance, consciousness, gratitude, and the enduring meaning of love.

Dia de los Muertos: The Day of the Dead

Let us begin with Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Its name may sound somber, but many of its expressions are filled with color, flowers, music, food, and family stories. That combination can surprise people who associate remembering the dead only with sadness. Yet sadness and celebration can share the same space. We can miss someone deeply and still smile when we remember them.

We can cry over their absence and laugh over something wonderful they once did. Love has room for both. Dia de los Muertos is especially associated with Mexico and is also observed by Mexican communities abroad, including in the United States. Its roots reach into indigenous Mesoamerican practices that existed before Spanish colonization. During the colonial period, those traditions interacted with Catholic observances, helping shape the early November celebration known today. How far back does it go, you might ask? Its indigenous foundation reached back many centuries into civilizations that flourished before the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. Some museum accounts describe roots reaching approximately three thousand years into the past.

We should also understand that as the age of ancestral traditions, rather than imagining that every modern custom has remained unchanged for three thousand years, today's celebration has developed over time. That is an important lesson in itself. Traditions live because people carry them forward. Each generation receives something, preserves something, and gives something new.

The main observance takes place around November first and second, although practices and schedules vary by community. Within many indigenous Mexican traditions, this is understood as a time when deceased relatives return to visit the living. UNESCO describes the celebration as an expression of the relationship between indigenous beliefs and Catholic feasts.

We can respectfully acknowledge that belief without requiring everyone in the room to interpret it in precisely the same way. Some may understand it as literal spiritual reunion. Others may experience it through memory, ritual, and a feeling of renewed closeness. Either way, the act of remembering becomes intentional.

The Ofrenda: Remembering the Whole Person

One meaningful expression is the ofrenda. An offering arranged to honor those who have died. Photographs, personal objects, candles, and favorite foods can make the remembrance specific to the person being honored. Think about what that means. A photograph says you had a face, you had a name. A personal object says your life had its own character. A favorite food says, We remember what brought you pleasure.

There is tenderness in remembering those ordinary details. When someone dies, it is easy for their story to become reduced to the date of their birth and the date of their death. But a human life is much larger than those two dates. A life includes how someone danced in the kitchen, how they answered the telephone. How they made coffee and how they worried about everyone getting home safely. It includes the jokes that they told too many times. It includes lessons we resisted when we were young and finally understood when we grew older. An offering can become a way of saying, We remember the person you were. From a metaphysical perspective, you might see this as an invitation to direct our attention with love. Consider the difference between rushing past a photograph and sitting beside it for a few minutes. The photograph has not changed. Our attention has changed. We become present to the relationship. We allow gratitude, sorrow, affection, or unfinished feelings to rise. Ritual gives those feelings a place to go.

Imagine preparing a dish your grandmother used to make. As you measure the ingredients, you remember her hands. You remember the smell of her kitchen. You remember how she welcomed people. Then you serve the dish to someone younger and tell them her story. Something important has traveled from one generation to another. Her kindness found another expression. Her story has found another listener.

This is one reason the holiday matters. It helps keep family and community memory alive. Public celebration and family observances also help Mexican and Mexican American communities express cultural identity. In the United States, Chicano artists and community organizers help expand public Dia de los Muertos celebrations during the 20th century. So when we encounter flowers, artwork, and celebrations, we are encountering a living cultural tradition with people and histories behind it. Our appreciation becomes deeper when we learn from those who practice it. And we can ask ourselves what story in my own family needs to be preserved? Who taught me something that I have never written down? What would disappear if I never shared it?

All Saints Day

Now let us turn to All Saints Day. In much of Western Christianity, All Saints Day is observed on November first. It honors all the saints, including those whose names are not known and those whose holiness was never publicly recognized. Its foundations lie in the early Christian practice of honoring martyrs, people who died because of their faith.

As these commemorations developed, a shared feast provided a way to honor many together. An important milestone occurred in Rome in six hundred nine or six hundred ten when Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon as a church honoring Mary and the martyrs. That commemoration was associated with May thirteenth. During the eighth century, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel at Saint Peter's to all saints.

With November 1st becoming associated with the feast, its observance spread more widely in the following century. We are therefore looking at a tradition with roots extending more than 1400 years into Christian history, with earlier foundations in the remembrance of martyrs. The observance also reminds us that Christian traditions do not follow the same calendar in Eastern Orthodoxy. The Sunday of All Saints falls on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

That difference can teach us humility. People may share a sacred intention without expressing it on the same day or in the same way. For our reflection today, let us consider the meaning of a saint. Many people would immediately picture someone extraordinary, a person whose life appeared almost beyond reach. But All Saints Day includes the unknown saints. That gives us something beautiful to contemplate.

There are lives of goodness that never become famous. There are people whose names never appear in history books, whose love changed the direction of another person's life. A caregiver shows up every day. A neighbor who notices that someone is lonely. A person who refuses to humiliate someone when they have the power to do so. A teacher who sees possibility in a child everyone else has dismissed.

These examples are a spiritual reflection on goodness. They are not a claim that every church would formally recognize these people as saints. They help us ask where holiness becomes visible in ordinary life. For a metaphysical chapel, we might understand Christ's consciousness as awakening to divine love and allowing that awareness to shape our actions. Then goodness becomes something we practice.

We listen more carefully. We forgive where we can. We tell the truth with compassion. We recognize another person's dignity, even when we disagree. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus calls his listeners the light of the world. Later in that passage, he connects that light with good works. That connection matters. The light becomes visible through what we do. Perhaps someone in your life showed you that kind of light.

I know they have in mind. They may have had faults, they may have been stubborn, impatient, or difficult at times. Yet there was something in them that helped you become kinder, stronger, or more courageous. Remembering their goodness does not require pretending they were perfect. It requires paying attention to what was worthy of being carried forward. Ask yourself who showed me how to look?

Who demonstrated courage when life became difficult? Who helped me understand generosity?

Now comes a question that moves remembrance into responsibility. How will I practice what they taught me?

If we remember someone's generosity, we can become more generous. If we admire their courage, we can take the next brave step in our own lives. If their hospitality made us feel welcome, we can make room for someone else. This is one of the gifts of All Saints Day. The lives we honor can become guides for the lives we are still living in.

All Souls Day

We move now to All Souls Day, traditionally observed on November 2nd. Its formal Catholic name is the commemoration of all faithful departed. In Catholic teaching, it is particularly a day of prayer for the deceased undergoing purification before entering the fullness of heaven. A teaching associated with purgatory. All Saints Day celebrates the saints in heaven. All Souls Day offers prayer for the faithful departed who are still being purified.

That distinction helps us understand why there are two separate observances. The practice of praying for the dead is older than the annual feast itself. The November second observance is strongly associated with Saint Odilo, abbot of Cluny in France. Around the turn of the eleventh century, the year nine ninety eight is commonly given, although historical accounts differ over the exact date. From Cluny and its network of monasteries, the observance spread. That gives All Souls Day a history of roughly a thousand years as a dedicated annual observance. These early November days are observed in many parts of the world, in countries such as Poland, Italy, and the Philippines.

Church services, flowers, candles, and cemetery visits are important expressions of remembrance. Families may gather across both days with customs varying by place. Imagine a cemetery illuminated by thousands of candles. Each light represents someone remembered, someone missed, someone whose life remains connected to another's life. From a distance, we see a field of light.

Up close each flame belongs to a particular story. That image speaks to our metaphysical understanding of individuality within connection. We belong to a greater whole, yet each person's life matters. Each person brings experiences, relationships, and a way of expressing love that cannot be simply replaced.

Within this chapel we may hold different beliefs about what happens after death. Some believe in continued personal consciousness, some believe in reincarnation, some understand the soul as returning to the source. Others remain uncertain and leave room for mystery. We can share remembrance while allowing those differences. When we speak of consciousness continuing beyond death, we are expressing spiritual belief.

Historical tradition shows us how people have understood death. They do not by themselves establish what happened afterward. Still, we can ask what love calls us to do here and now.

It may call us to pray. It may call us to support someone who is grieving. It may call us to make peace with something unfinished. And the last invitation deserves gentleness. Our relationship with those who have died is not always simple. Some memories bring warmth. Others bring sorrow, anger, confusion, or regret. Someone may be thinking, I wish I said more. Another may be thinking, I wish things had been different. Another may feel both love and relief and then feel guilty for that relief. All of those feelings deserve room. Spiritual remembrance does not require us to rewrite the past. We can acknowledge the good without denying the harm. We can grieve what happened and also grieve what never happened. We can release some of that burden gradually without forcing ourselves to feel something we do not yet feel. Compassion includes honesty.

Perhaps a prayer for someone who has died can also become a prayer for our own wounded heart. May there be peace. May I find understanding. May I carry forward what nourishes life. May I receive help with what remains painful. For some of us, those words may come easily. For others, they may take time. There is no need to hurry.

Three Observances, One Invitation

As we bring these three observances together, we can hear three related invitations. Dia de los Muertos invites us to welcome remembrance through family, culture, and relationship. All Saints Day invites us to honor lives of holiness and let their example influence our own. All Souls Day invites us to pray for the departed and hold death within the community of care.

These meanings remain distinct, but together they ask us to take human life seriously, to remember its value, to recognize how deeply we affect one another. Think of a family tree. We usually imagine branches reaching outward, but every branch is supported by something that came before it. Our lives have that quality. We receive language, habits, opportunities. Challenges, traditions, and stories from early generations. Some of what we inherit is beautiful, some of it needs healing.

Our task is to decide what we will nourish.

If we inherited generosity, we can strengthen it.

If we inherited silence around painful experiences, we can learn to speak with care.

If we inherited prejudice, we can question it.

If we inherited fear, we can practice courage.

Honoring our ancestors can include changing a pattern that harmed them and might otherwise continue harming others. That change can be an act of love. We are able to say, I recognize what you carried, I will try to carry it differently. This is where remembrance becomes meaningful for the future.

Becoming Ancestors

We become ancestors ourselves through the influence we leave behind, whether or not we have children. Our words reach people, our choices shape relationships, our kindness may become part of a story we never hear. What are we placing into the lives that touch ours? Are we giving people a memory of being welcomed? A memory of being heard, a memory of someone who showed up when it mattered. The way we live today becomes someone else's remembrance tomorrow.

And as we approach the season of Thanksgiving, these observances remind us that gratitude reaches across time.

We also give thanks for opportunity we still have to love, to repair, to learn, and to begin again.

Closing Blessing

Perhaps that is one of the deepest meanings of remembering the dead. It awakens us to the value of being alive. There is someone we can appreciate now, someone whose story we can ask to hear now, someone we can thank while they are here to receive it. Let us remember those who have died and let the remembrance make us more attentive to those who are living.

May we honor the traditions that have carried these sacred days through generations. May we learn from the cultures and faiths that keep them alive. And may our memories become sources of compassion. May our grief find companionship, and may the love we have received become love we are willing to give. We remember because they lived. We give thanks because their lives touched ours.

And we honor them through goodness and continuing to bring it into this world. And so it is.