Whenever this time of year comes around, I make sure to keep two commemorations rather than one. Sadly, many churches across the Church of Ireland will only keep All Saints Sunday and disdain the keeping of All Souls Day which is an ancient part of Allhallowstide – the season of remembering, coming at the end of the year, the dying of the year one might say – before it gives way to Advent – the time of preparing for the new.Perhaps it's a hangover from the past, the fear that it was associated with Purgatory and indulgences, concepts that the Reformers rejected, but also possibly tainted by a certain tendency towards negative self-definition – we don’t do it – because they do.But at ‘All Souls’ we remember people who are not particularly famous, nor were they necessarily examples to many, but we lovingly remember those who are so inextricably linked with us that they may well have been amongst the most important influences in our lives.Few of us have ever been spared the pain of loss, sometimes repeatedly. And at ‘All Souls’ we can especially remember that this is a burden of human mortality that each one of us carries, one that we should not and need not carry alone.And then at All Saints the memories are not so personal, so visceral, but nevertheless we honour heroes of the Christian faith.This combined season of All Hallows, this time of remembering, reminds us not only of those who have gone before us, in all their infinite variety, the famous and the obscure, the virtuous and the sinful, but that we also are in the business of building souls – our own.