Halloween-- It's All About the Saints!

Halloween---Its All About Saints!
 

Did you know that if you visit a cemetery between November 1st and November 8th, and pray for the dead, you could gain a plenary indulgence? Now, if you are younger than 50, I bet you have no idea what a plenary indulgence is—And I will get to its specific definition—but it is part of the beautiful collection of Catholic beliefs and teachings about death and life after death.

But I will tell you this, one of the strangest phenomena that I have witnessed in the last few years is the weirdness of what I guess we could call the growing Halloween industry.

We all see this Halloween mania year after year, as it gets bigger and bigger. And if you are a curmudgeon traditionalist like me you think to yourself that if you see one more house covered with fake cobwebs and orange lights and ghouls and ghosts hanging from trees and fake graves littering front yards, you’ll just about bust!

I know it is mostly just families having fun at the end of October and the beginning of November, and like everything else, the decorations have to get bigger and more elaborate each year and our expectations of more hideous and ghastly scenes grow stronger.

I know there is nothing diabolical about all these Halloween manifestations—No one intends to consort with the devil or have commerce with demons or dally with the undead. Everyone is just playing. It is a little like other holiday seasons—But, you know,  with this season-- there does not even seem to be a point to it all.

What does it mean when we are so overwhelmingly pre-occupied with the decay of death—with the sick and the twisted, with ugly and evil—all at the same time that fewer and fewer of our families are going to church—and therefore they are no longer hearing about death as the doorway to eternal happiness with God—they are no longer hearing about the existence of the soul or what happens at death or what God has prepared for those who love Him—they are not even hearing about a good God who loves them.

I suppose it means that the knowledge and the comfort and the peace that comes from our Catholic beliefs about death and life is absent from these poor people’s hearts—at least in any significant way. And they fill up that emptiness and unknowledge about the after life with silliness and nonsense about ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night.

That is how cemeteries become spooky and creepy and they start calling them “graveyards”—places to be avoided—and to be vandalized-- rather than the beautiful peaceful God’s acre where the bodies of our parents and grandparents lie at rest waiting for the Resurrection.

That is how prayers for the dead at a wake or even a funeral become an imposition or something we have to do-- just to get it over with—until we can get to the eulogies; and that is why there are many people who consider all those Catholic devotions about death to be a little morbid—because they have no idea that we are concentrating on life.

 Halloween and its jack-o-lanterns and witches have now become High Holy days for people without much in the way of religion.

Of course, the perfect antidote to all this ugliness is our beautiful Catholic faith because our Faith tells us what death really means when it comes into our lives. Yes, there is sadness and longing—but there ought to be no horror. There ought to be no terror—no fear—no overwhelming loathing and apprehension—What ought to be is peace and the happy expectation deep within our hearts that we shall see our loved ones again—just as they were and just as they should have been—What ought to be when we contemplate death is a joy that no one can take from us—a joy and hope so palpable that we can even look forward to the day of our own death.

And that’s where Indulgences come in—because an indulgence is a gift of love from God to us by which our acts of love—our prayers and penances and sufferings—are given to us and to our deceased loved ones so that any punishment due to our sins is removed and then replaced by love and grace.

Every sin we ever commit, if justice is to be accomplished,  must be made up for, either by means of our offering up our sufferings here on earth or in purgatory.   Yes,  justice will always be done in God’s universe but sometimes that justice is served in mercy.  In other words, God grants that the debt of our sins can be paid for by prayers love sacrifices and sufferings. This is an indulgence—the final gift of an indulgent God. And the Church because it is the Mystical Body of Christ has the authority to grant that certain prayers and actions are worthy of lessening our punishment or taking it away entirely

This is what a plenary indulgence is--- all the punishment due to our sins—is remitted, full pardon,  so to speak,  which we can apply to ourselves or to our deceased friends and family.

Our beautiful Catholic  Church grants to those who visit Catholic cemeteries the first  week in November a plenary indulgence.

I guess we could say that a plenary indulgence is the happiest possible proclamation that this season October and November is not about the forces of evil and darkness—but about the victory of  God, the victory of love and light. And for those who have lost someone,  it is surely a most beautiful, happy, and hopeful time of year.