Everything, human life no less, comes to an end. That is the message of the holy days from the end of October to the second of November. The question is, “To what end shall we come?” The answer depends on the truth of a man’s faith, the holiness of his life and on God’s judgment.
The mummies, vampires, zombies, white ladies, monsters and ghosts we pretend to be at Halloween or the Eve of All Hallows (Saints), remind us of the reality of hell, the end of those who die in enmity with God. As Saint Francis said, “We should all realize that no matter where or how a man dies, if he is in the state of mortal sin and does not repent, when he could have done so and did not, the Devil tears his soul from his body with such anguish and distress that only a person who has experienced it can appreciate it.”
No horror movie can beat that.
All Saints’ Day reminds us of our connection to the Church in Heaven or the Church triumphant. We honor the many canonized saints as well as those whom we can only, for now, hope to know. Saint John the Evangelist in the book of the Apocalypse or Revelation tells us that the crowd of those who washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb cannot be numbered (cf. Revelation 7:9). For some time I have held that a great number of Saints were so humble they prayed while they were on earth for the grace of going uncanonized after they died.
That is not to say the canonized were less humble. One who truly loves God and neighbor has not the narcissism to speculate whether or not one will die with canonical colors. A saint is not a like a student who fancies that his education is gauged in honorific grades rather than in a deepening love of learning.
The saints remind us to go, as they did, for the prize of faithfulness to God in the face of adversity that is eternal friendship with Jesus Christ. What does that look like? St. John in Revelation uses the image of a wedding banquet to describe the new heavens and the new earth where all the saints will go. But there is more to heaven, St. Paul tells us: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).”
Over the Last Supper, in St. Luke’s account, our Lord tells the apostles: “You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22:28-30).”
Part of the destiny of the saints is the administration of realms that the Lord entrusts to them. The Church, the Body of Christ, addresses saints as patrons. St. Philip Neri is the patron of animals, St. Francis of Assisi is the patron of the ecology, St. John Bosco is the patron of the youth and so on. We ask for the intercession of the saints because the Lord has entrusted the different realities of our lives to them.
We know the saints help us draw closer to God. According to the Gospel of St. John, shortly before Jesus’ death, some Greeks requested an audience with our Lord through St. Philip, who in turn told St. Andrew about their plea (cf. John 12:20-22).
All Saints’ Day means, in the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “looking at the shining example of the saints to reawaken within us the great longing to be like them; happy to live near God, in his light, in the great family of God’s friends. Being a saint means living close to God, to live in his family. And this is the vocation of us all.”
All Souls’ Day is a reminder that we, the Church militant, are connected with the Church suffering in Purgatory, which is a route to Heaven for those who were forgiven while on earth but were unable to go through the temporal punishment due to sin or to gain plenary indulgence for the remission of punishment. Why do we Catholics pray for the eternal repose of the souls of our loved ones and the souls of the forgotten? The Pope Emeritus gave a stirring explanation in his encyclical “Spe Salvi”:
“The souls of the departed can, however, receive ‘solace and refreshment’ through the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon?”
“Now a further question arises: if ‘Purgatory’ is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse.”
“So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God’s time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain.”