THE EVE OF ALL THE HALLOWS

 Tomorrow is the glory of all the saints. The grand saints, who are known to millions: St Mary Magdalen, St Francis, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Dominic, St Teresa of Avila, Ste Thérèse of Lisieux, and my beloved patron saint St John (Yochanan), the only disciple who didn’t skedaddle from Golgotha but stayed at the foot of the Cross.  But also the little saints whom nobody knows except their neighbours, their family members, or the customers of the store or restaurant or gas station where they serve, or the passengers of the taxi they drive. The people who are always there when you are ill and feeling down, who give you a smile on a grim day, who make you feel for a moment that life is not so bad after all. The people of whom you know that they feel your pain – and the knowing already calms it a little. 

            Tomorrow, then, is their feast. Worth celebrating hugely. Buy them a beer, or just lift your glass and think of them with love.

            But tonight: the Eve. What is the Eve? La veille, as the French say. And in that word is the verb veiller, to watch, to stay awake and alert. Because, said the ancients, on the Eve of such a feast, a feast of so much sheer goodness, the forces that cannot bear the goodness, that find it intolerable, will come out and torment. They will flly and slide and whisper around our houses; they will try to enter our minds and persuade us that the world is lost, that Evil has allready won, that there is no hope, and that we all are just killers without a gun. 

            And that – tell your children – that is why we carve pumpkins into grimaces, why we parody evil in silly costumes, why we celebrate goofy trick-or-treats, why we have drunken parties: to taunt the evil spirits, to show them that we are not afraid, because All the Saints are with us, and tomorrow we will celebrate them with dignity and style, and be thankful for their prayers and their protection. We are breadcrumbs on the skirt of the universe, but we are also children of God, and we are loved. We are never alone under a black sky; we are never delivered utterly unto hate; we are loved, and the Evil One cannot defeat our faith. 

Happy Hallowe’en!