A Candlelight Remembrance & Evening Prayer

This service is for anyone who has lost a child or anyone who wishes to support those who have lost a child.

Sunday, December 14 | 4:30 PM Silent Prayer | 5:00 PM Evening Prayer

On Sunday, December 14th, 2025, St. Luke's Episcopal Church will hold a candlelight prayer service at 4:30 pm in the evening. This service will be held in conjunction with Worldwide Candle Lighting Day to remember those who have lost a child. Beginning at 4:30 pm, the sanctuary will be open for silent prayer. A candle altar will be available to light a candle in memory of loved ones lost. At 5:00 pm, the Reverend Julia Joyce-Miesse will lead an Evening Prayer service. Coffee and refreshments will be available in the Undercroft following the service. 

Worldwide Candle Lighting Day is held the second Sunday of December. Worldwide Candle Lighting Day was created by The Compassionate Friends organization in 1966 at the Warwickshire Hospital in England. A chaplain by the name of Simon Stephens had brought together two sets of grieving parents who had just lost their children. He realized the support they gave one another was more than he could do to ease their pain.

www.compassionatefriends.org 
Worldwide Candle Lighting Memorial Service

The Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting on the 2nd Sunday in December unites family and friends around the globe in lighting candles for one hour to honor the memories of the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and grandchildren who left too soon. As candles are lit on December 14th, 2025 at 7:00 pm local time, hundreds of thousands of people commemorate and honor the memory of all children gone too soon.

Now believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe, the annual Worldwide Candle Lighting (WCL), a gift to the bereavement community from The Compassionate Friends, creates a virtual 24-hour wave of light as it moves from time zone to time zone. TCF’s WCL started in the United States in 1997 as a small internet observance and has since swelled in numbers as word has spread throughout the world of the remembrance. Hundreds of formal candle lighting events are held, and thousands of informal candle lightings are conducted in homes, as families gather in quiet remembrance of children who have died and will never be forgotten.