Members of the St. Edward’s University community gathered to remember their deceased loved ones, under the setting sun at Sorin Oak.

Campus Ministry, Student Affairs, Student Life, Residence Life and the Health and Counseling Center hosted the fourth annual Prayer of Remembrance last week.

“We’re gathering here not just as Christians, but as an interfaith community to remember those who have gone before us,” said Jennifer Veninga, professor of religious and theological studies. “I think remembering those who have gone before us is important not just for the deceased, those who are gone, but it is important for us to remember.”

Veninga thinks of remembering as actually ‘re-membering,’ meaning to put back together the ‘members’ of a community while in the act of remembering.

Student Life Associate Director Carey Mays read from Isaiah 40:21-31; then Brother Gerald Muller read St. Paul’s Letter from 2 Corinthians 4:14 and 5:1.

Next, Campus Ministry student Michelle Hernandez read the Prayer upon Hearing of the Deaths, followed by Veninga who read an elegy by Walt Whitman entitled “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

“This event is held every year to commemorate people that we love who have died recently or long ago,” Muller said. “We pray then for those we love, that they are at peace with God and are waiting for us.

The people present at the Remembrance Ceremony said aloud the names of their dead loved ones, then paused for a moment of silence.

Director of Campus Ministry the Rev. Peter Walsh played guitar and sang “Wild Mountain Thyme,” a Celtic folk song he heard throughout his childhood. Walsh said the song signifies a temporary departing that will receive a future unity.

To conclude the service, people in attendance wrote the names of their deceased loved ones on stones. A table with the stones will be displayed for the week under Sorin Oak as a reminder of those who have passed.

The Health and Counseling Center has several free resources available — like a group for depression and anxiety — for anyone mourning a loss or struggling with grief, HCC Director Calvin Kelly said.

“The worst thing you could allow to happen is that it begins to snowball and impact your overall functioning, your academics and your life as a whole,” Kelly said.