Week 3/4
As parents, you are no doubt keenly aware of Halloween, that light-hearted festival of the silly and the macabre that comes at the end of each October and brings with it candy, costumes, and jack-o-lanterns. It's a holiday which is often controversial in some Christian communities because it is often associated with the occult, the demonic, and death. In general, this kind of concern arises far less among Catholics, not because we approve of the occult or demons (we don't), but in part because of the venerable Catholic tradition of enculturation. Throughout the centuries, the Church has always been willing to accept what is good in any culture and adapt it to our own traditions. We may not like the darker elements that are sometimes brought into Halloween, but we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater either.
More importantly, Halloween originated as the vigil of the great Catholic feast of All Hallows, making the night before All Hallows Eve - or, if pronounced too quickly, Halloween. Catholics are often stereotyped as a people of penance, and while expressing sorrow for our sins is an important part of our faith, we are also a people of great joy and celebration. The official calendar of the Church is filled with feasts celebrating various saints and aspects of our faith. On All Saints day, the Church calls us to honor all of the saints in Heaven, especially those who do not have a particular day set aside for their own feast. The men and women whom we honor on All Saints day are the shining triumph of humanity: people who have lived lives of total dedication to God and who now enjoy the reward to which we are all called. So important is this feast that in most years it is one of the few holy days of obligation - days on which the Church requires us to attend Mass because of the importance of the celebration. (In 2014, it happens not to be).
Often forgotten is the day following All Saints day: All Souls day. While on All Saints day we celebrate and honor those who have gone before us and are already enjoying union with God in Heaven, on All Souls day we remember and pray for in a special way those who have passed on from their earthly lives but are undergoing a purification before enjoying full union with the Lord. Known as Purgatory, this often misunderstood idea that those destined for Heaven will undergo some kind of purification after death is not simply an old and abandoned teaching of the middle ages, but an important truth about the tremendous mercy and love of God.
The best explanation of why we need Purgatory that I ever heard is also the simplest: on earth everyone is sinning, but in Heaven nobody is - and so something happens in between. Let's face it: we are all attached to our sins. Most of us don't really want to do the wrong thing in any given situation, but we tend to find ourselves doing it anyways. We usually acknowledge this in a minor way when it comes time for New Year's resolutions, but when we're honest with ourselves we know that it's more than just overeating, smoking, or being a little more lazy than we should be. We lose our tempers, lie, take advantage of others, are selfish with our time, don't pray the way we should, and do and fail to do a million other little - and sometimes big - things.
The belief in Purgatory says that God knows this, that he loves us anyways, and that he will "clean us up" to make us the people he made us - and that we want - to be. What's more, we don't have to wait until we're dead: God gave us what we need to begin the process now through more frequent reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist so that we have less cleaning up to do when we move on from this life.
This weekend is a tremendous celebration of these truths of our faith and, ultimately, of that great teaching of the Church on the Communion of Saints. We say it each week in the Nicene Creed at Mass, but don't often think about what it means - and what it means is really cool. It means that all of the people of God - those on earth, those in Heaven, and those preparing for Heaven in Purgatory, are united. We are not separated from those we love who have moved on, but if they are in Christ then we are united to them insofar as we are in Christ, too. This is one of the reasons that the Church warns us against psychics and other aspects of the occult that we mentioned at the beginning. The people of God are already more intimately connected through Christ than we can possibly imagine; other means of seeking them attempt to circumvent the Lord and somehow get to them apart from him.
In the past, we here on earth were sometimes called the "Church Militant" (along with the "Church Triumphant" in Heaven and the "Church Suffering" in Purgatory). The term "militant" was intentionally suggestive of action, because we are called to action. This weekend, remember your membership in the Communion of the Saints. Turn to the saints in Heaven, those who have gone before us and now see God face to face, and ask them to pray for you and to lead you to the joy in which they now live. Remember and pray for those who have passed on and who may be, under the gentle care of our merciful Lord, preparing for an eternity of happiness. Finally, let it all be an inspiration to you to live your faith to its fullest now here on earth, drawing close to that loving and merciful Lord and allowing him to lead you in all things.
God bless, and Happy Halloween!
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