I write this on what is known as Halloween, which has become the second most profitable holiday for those who sell things related to this holiday. The popularity of the holiday leaves one wondering why this is so. One thing we do know: that the day has lost any religious significance it once had. Hallowe’en used to nod to the not so pious belief that the sinister forces in the world would all revel on this night in anticipation of their banishment on All Saints Day. Saint-Saëns’ orchestral piece, Danse Macabre, evokes the frenzy of the witches and goblins and ghouls as they dance wildly until the clock strikes midnight: and then they must vanish, for they cannot exist in the presence of the Saints.
We celebrate the great feast of All Saints with great joy, for the Saints are the living proof of the power of Grace to make men and women holy. The Saints also are witnesses to the reality of that place we call heaven that transcends our time and space that place to which we are all called. And we thank God for their intercession for each of us, to whom we can ask that they pray for us and for our intentions. They are the treasuries of the Church, and that treasure is available to us all.
The following day is All Souls, on which we remember those who have died in the hope of the Resurrection and hope of heaven. I wish this were a Holy Day of Obligation as well as All Saints Day. In an age that has forgotten the dead and tries its best to deny the reality and importance of death itself, it would be a salutary thing to ask Catholics to come to Mass to pray for the dead, especially for those they loved and see no more. The great majority of Catholics have never seen a Solemn Requiem Mass. It is a tragedy that they have never participated in the simple and deep beauty of the Requiem Mass. Its banishment after the Second Vatican Council has been of great loss to the Church and to the world. Some of the most sublime music ever written has been written for the Propers of this Mass: from the sublimity of the Gregorian chant, to the heart breaking polyphony of Victoria, to the dark majesty of the Mozart Requiem. It is the Requiem Mass that enables one to spiritually enter into the complexity of death as understood by the Christian: the opening Introit—give them eternal rest; the harrowingly magnificent Sequence, the Dies Irae, that takes the power of death seriously and the power of faith seriously; the Offertory with its imagery of St Michael the Archangel assisting the soul of the departed into the holy light and joining the promise made to Abraham and the promise of Christ for eternal life for those who have faith in Him; the final Antiphon, In Paradisum—may the angels lead you into paradise....
In this month of November, let us thank God for the Saints who intercede for us in heaven. And let us remember those who have died and the need to pray for them.
