Apologies to Harold Ramis, his great cast and fun film
Let’s spell out a few key points about this feast.
First. There is a lot of nonsense spoken about Hallowe’en,
which is part of this feast. Hallowe’en means the eve,
or “e’en” of All Hallows, which is just another way of saying, All Saints.
So maybe you saw someone claim that we Catholics
dressed up a pagan holiday and turned it into this feast.
Not true.
The fact that a pagan holiday was on or around Nov. 1 is meaningless.
If you do more research,
you’ll discover there were pagan holidays all year long!
You can’t pick a day that doesn’t have some pagan association.
That’s why, therefore, you see the same claim made
about Easter, Christmas, Candlemas, Assumption,
and lots of saints days as well.
So, the pagan holiday associated with Oct. 31? It was in Ireland.
The first celebration of All Saints on November 1?
That was in Rome, when Pope Gregory III
dedicated a chapel to All Saints.
Why’d he pick Nov. 1? Maybe because that’s when it was finished?
But no, he wasn’t thinking about pagans in Ireland!
Let’s stop being on the defensive about Hallowe’en and All Saints.
There’s nothing wrong with wholesome fun.
But the main point was and is the saints.
That is my second point: Halllowe’en and All Saints are about grace.
Grace is God’s own life and love, poured into our lives,
to make us like God.
All Saints – including the eve, Hallowe’en –
exists to celebrate God’s success stories.
What would it say about Jesus’ plan to become human, go to the Cross, found the Church on the apostles
and send them out in the power of the Holy Spirit,
and 2,000 years later, and there wasn’t much success?
Like, we maybe got one saint a century, we’re up to 20! Woo hoo!
No! We have in the shared memory of our Church,
the names of tens of thousands of saints.
We don’t even know for sure, because so much information was lost.
We have stories about many of them,
But for others, we have but a name and the barest details,
Such as Saint Christopher and St. George.
With Saints Valentine and Cecilia,
we may have multiple saints jumbled together.
But that makes sense: a boy in the 3rd century
was named for a saint from the second century,
and the boy becomes a saint too!
Isn’t that why you name a child after a saint?
There are places named for saints because there was a church,
but now that’s just a pile of stones. No one knows any more about it.
All that is left is the memory, but what a memory!
They remembered God’s grace and that memory lives on.
Of course, there are vastly more saints
who we will not know about until we, ourselves,
become saints and join them.
Just a note here about All Souls, which comes on November 2.
That is the day for the “faithful departed,” meaning:
for those who weren’t necessarily finished products,
as it were, in this life, but who have certain hope –
I repeat, certain hope – of victory.
If you didn’t know this before, hear me:
everyone who enters Purgatory will be a saint. Without exception.
Purgatory is the saint-finishing school, and our prayers help.
Now, a final point, about the way this day of grace is being falsified.
Surely you notice that lots of celebration of Hallowe’en
isn’t about good, but about evil.
Not about the saints, but devils and other ominous things.
It’s not about heaven, but about hell.
So much so, that many people avoid Hallowe’en.
And that’s a shame because, again, it’s about Heaven, not hell.
Don’t be fooled.
Of course, the devil would want to change the subject to himself!
Every time God fills another human being with light, forever,
is a scalding defeat for the enemy. He hates it!
God wants friendship and love, the devil wants fear and pain.
I am asking all of us to work together to change the subject back:
Hallowe’en and All Saints are about God’s grace changing us.
There’s nothing wrong with having fun with scary stories,
But just remember, to be a friend of Jesus – to be a saint –
is to have nothing at all to be afraid of.
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