“There’s a fair bit of grief out there.”

These words from The Rev. Matthew Perreault, newly appointed rector at St. Thomas, Eustis, identify the need that prompted the planning of an All Souls service co-hosted by three Lake County parishes.

The service, scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 6 p.m. at St. Thomas, is the joint project of Perreault, The Rev. Mark Lafler of St. Edward’s, Mount Dora, and The Rev. Tom Trees of St. James, Leesburg.

“We’ve seen so many people who have experienced a death in their family or close friends in the last year,” Perreault said. “And more than that, with the various travel restrictions that are in place, people have not always been able to gather to have a funeral service or some proper form of marking the death of a relative.”

The current season of grief, along with the inspiration from both a seminary friend and a previous Blue Christmas service he attended, first moved Perreault to contact the two other priests about co-hosting the All Souls service.

In his short time of living in the area, Perreault has also noticed the overlap between the three neighboring communities. “There’s a lot of cross-pollination in this area because people have moved around a lot over the years, and they’ve stuck with their original parish. So it occurred to me that this is something we could offer together. … And it also offers us an opportunity to join together to reach out into the wider community, which is part of what I’m excited to do. We’re all parishes of the diocese, and we’re all working together for Christ.”

Although the service has only recently been announced, Perreault says his parishioners look forward to it. “I think within the parish, this may be an opportunity to recognize the grief for all those parishioners who have died over the last little while, and to mark that as a point of transition when we can acknowledge that grief, we can acknowledge our hope in Christ, and we can then move forward, having an opportunity to express that.”

St. Thomas will offer two All Souls services, Perreault said. The morning service, for parishioners only, will afford a more intimate setting. But the day’s primary focus will be the joint evening service, which will not only serve those who can’t attend during the day but will be “an offering to the wider community,” he said.

“I think that one of the challenges of our modern society is that we’ve kind of tried to say that grief is something that you should just get over,” Perreault said. “It seems like we haven’t recovered from the changes that started happening … in the 1970s when we stopped talking about people dying and started talking about them ‘passing on.’

“I fundamentally believe that those changes have hurt us as a culture and as a society, because it removes the permission to express that grief and to say, ‘No, there’s been a trauma here. There’s been a change. Someone whom I loved was here and is no longer here, and I am feeling grief over that,'” Perrault explained.

“One of the nice things about All Souls is it’s an opportunity, even for people who have celebrated a funeral recently, to come in, and there’s no sort of cultural baggage,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to express our grief and to express our hope.”

All three priests, along with other ordained and lay volunteers, will share in responsibilities for the service and invite anyone interested to attend.