Last night we celebrated what has become one of the biggest secular holidays- Halloween. While it may seem obvious to some, I doubt that most people in the current cultural milieu get that "Halloween" is a contraction of "Hallows Eve." Of course, we use "hallow" as a verb everytime we celebrate Mass. Just before receiving communion, together we pray the Our Father, which begins: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...
To "hallow" something or someone means to treat her/him/it as something very precious (in the non-pejorative sense), as someone/something holy. The second of the Ten Commandments enjoins us "not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.”1
In addition to being a verb, "hallow" is also a noun, as in "All Hallows." A "hallow" is someone or something worthy of one's respect and even veneration- someone or something that is hallowed is holy. The communio sanctorum, remember, is the holy communion of people and things.
Essentially, Halloween marks the beginning the Church's annual festival that occurs at the beginning of November, the month during which we contemplate the end of the world as we know it and so the time when we call to mind in a very explicit way those who have gone before us. Spiritually, November is the month of momento mori (i.e., remember death).
Why, if all the saints the Church officially recognizes have their own memorial or feast day, do we celebrate All Saints? Well, today’s celebration is mostly about those holy women and men who are not officially recognized by the Church. These are ordinary people who, during their earthly life loved Jesus and their neighbor. As Pope Francis noted in his Apostolic Exhortation "On the Call to Holiness In Today's World," Gaudete et Exsultate, “The Holy Spirit bestows holiness in abundance among God’s holy and faithful people.”2
During his more than twenty-six year pontificate, Pope Saint John Paul II canonized nearly 500 saints. He was sometimes criticized for this, despite the lives of these women and men being posthumously subjected the Church's rigorous canonical process that precedes anyone being raised to the altar. Like Pope Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation, John Paul II wanted to show that holiness is not as rare and unattainable as we often suppose it to be. I daresay, most of us have encountered holy people in our lives.
In our first reading from Revelation, we heard about “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”3 Who are these nameless people? They are those who live their lives for the love of God and their neighbor.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish convert to Christianity, whose name before becoming a Carmelite nun was Edith Stein and who died during the Shoah in Auschwitz wrote:
The greatest figures of prophecy and sanctity step forth out of the darkest night… [I doubt she wrote this in the awareness that she would be of these great figures] Certainly the most decisive turning points in world history are substantially co-determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe the decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed4I have already mentioned the Ten Commandments. Just as the Ten Commandments are the “charter” of the Law God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, the Beatitudes are our Christian charter.
To live by the Beatitudes- to be meek, to desire righteousness, which is to desire to be like Jesus, to be merciful, to be a peacemaker, even to the point of enduring wrongs patiently and without seeking revenge. The Beatitudes are the ingredients for the recipe of holiness.
Living the Beatitudes is hard because it runs against so much of our cuntural conditioning. Living this way may even, as the lives of many saints teach us, cause you great distress. For example, it isn’t easy to bless and to pray for your enemies. As Rich Mullins sang quite a few years ago:
Lord it's hard to turn the other cheekElsewhere in 1 John, the same book of the Bible from which today’s New Testament reading is taken, we learn “This is the way we may know that we are in union with [Jesus]: whoever claims to abide in him ought to live [just] as he lived.”6 It is by living in this way, the way Jesus not only taught but the way that he lived, that we are revealed as God’s children now.
Hard to bless when others curse you
Oh Lord it's hard to be a man of peace
Lord it's hard ~ oh it's hard
You know it's hard to be like Jesus5
Returning to Rich's song:
And it's hard to step out on them wavesBeing like Jesus is so hard that you can’t do it by yourself. The good news is you were never meant to! God made us to need each other. Hence, “no one is saved alone.”8 In addition to one another, we need Jesus, the One who brings us together in this Mass and who, through our holy communion, unites us not only himself but to one another as well as those who have gone before us.
Hard to walk beyond your vision
Oh Lord it's hard to be a man of faith
Oh Lord it's hard to be like Jesus7
1 See Exodus 20:7.↩
2 Pope Francis. Apostolic Exhortation. Gaudete et Exsultate [Rejoice and Be Glad], sec. 6..↩
3 Revelation 7:9.↩
4 Edith Stein. From "Hidden Life and Epiphany."↩
5 Rich Mullins. A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band, “Hard.” 1993.↩
6 1 John 2:5-6.↩
7 "Hard."↩
8 Gaudete et Exsultate, sec. 6.↩
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