THE EVEN AND THE HALLOWS

Now that Hallowe'en is spreading like an oil-slick across the Atlantic and filling Western Europe with 8-year-old ghouls and wrapped sweets, it may be useful to remind the ignorant, and even the uncaring, about its morrow. In France, All Souls Day, November 2, has long been known as le jour des morts, the Day of the Dead, marked by visits to churchyard and cemetery and by a tidal wave of small-flowered chrysanthemums, bought at the local grocery shop or florist's to be placed on the tombs of the faithful departed. Now, even in the land of laïcité (state-sponsored secularism), Hallowe'en is spreading irresistibly; and so the two slices of the sandwich are in place, but the ham is absent and forgotten. And even in America the Religious, I'm not sure how many people remember that the scary fun of Hallowe'en is intended to scare the Powers of Darkness and not the populace.  For those Powers, the old folk wisdom said, walk the earth on this even, and we light candles in grinning heads to keep them away.
They walk the earth partly because the year's dark days are here, now after harvest, and partly because the morrow is a feast they hate with all their might. For it is the celebration of All the Saints: the entire community of those who have returned God's love with a power and might that is exceptional; an intensity the rest of us can venerate but likely not attain; and in whom we rejoice because they inspire us and, many believe, pray for us because they know our need as even we do not.
We have all met, upon occasion, someone of real and transparent goodness, and from such persons something like a light shines forth that is doubtless at the origin of the halo with which painters endow them. Such a gentle light surrounds a person simply good. What of a saint? I don't think I've ever been in the physical presence of one; but I have seen on photo and on film, and read the writings of, some I canonise in my heart and the Church may soon if it has not already. And from such persons there comes a power, a penetrating influence that is like a vast radiance: quiet often, unassuming even, not always uncontroversial but impossible to ignore.
Now imagine a room, a palace, a firmament full of such singular intensities. Can our minds and hearts even begin to encompass the light and the cosmic joy of it? It would intimidate us; it would frighten us. And if it would frighten us, think of what it must do to those sad souls and spirits who cannot abide the love of God and have chosen endless night rather than have to encounter it. No wonder that at the mere approach of its mere commemoration they gibber and howl and stalk our streets in despair. They want our blood, or at least our happiness: they are mad with jealousy and bent on our destruction. So we light fires and candles, we sing songs, we eat and drink and pray, and we hug our children in their small disguises; because we are creatures of hope, and tomorrow comes the light of all God's darlings, united for our good.

WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN

Hallowe'en is catching on even in France. I suspect that 90% of those who celebrate it have no idea of its context nor of the feast of which it is the even. Mind you, few know much about its background either: the Wikipedia article on it is long and most informative. Still, I thought it would be good to have a little post on All Saints' Day, as a counterweight to all that cobwebs 'n candy.

People who like to read are divided into two kinds: readers of fiction and readers of non-fiction. For the latter – often those engaged in business or other ‘prosaic’ occupations – the favourite kinds of reading are history and biography. History has the pleasure of narrative with the assurance that this story ‘really happened’ and is thus not a flight of fancy or of mendacity; biography, often the lives of great men and women, has the virtue of inspiring admiration and emulation.

For readers of biography, the saints of the Church are a special case. One finds among them few entrepreneurs or scientists, and not many military heroes. However, there are no milquetoasts or marshmallows either. There are Martyrs: those who have suffered and died for the faith, from the victims of lions and gladiators in the Roman arenas to Maximilian Kolbe in Auschwitz. There are Confessors: those who have proclaimed the faith and worked tirelessly for it, and/or have lived signally holy lives, from the earliest hermits in the desert to the twentieth-century St Faustina Kowalska in Poland. There are Doctors: those who have applied their intelligence and learning to the faith and thus light the way for the rest of us, from St Athanasius to St Thérèse of Lisieux. There are the Evangelists, like St Francis Xavier, who brought the faith to far corners of the world. And there are the saints of Charity, like St Vincent de Paul and Mother Teresa, who have worked tirelessly for the poorest and most forgotten of humanity. Reading the lives of all these, and the works some of them have written, is indeed a journey of admiration and if inspiration: we learn courage, intentness, commitment, meditation, prayer, steadfastness and a vastness of faith that most of us sadly lack.

A particular case is that of the Saints Unknown. The Church allows for this: there are those whose faith shines, but shines in a small or remote context where it is not noticed by those who could bring it to the attention of the Church as a whole. Some of us have known people like this, and our lives have been genuinely blessed by the privilege and the joy. I find it pleasing that the category is recognised: there are so many flowers in so many fields, after all.

The Feast of All Saints celebrates and commemorates all those, famous, known, and unknown, who have been received in Heaven and there rejoice in the Presence of God. It is a joyful feast: meditating on all these extraordinary characters, one can almost feel caught up by them into a faint but joyous echo of Heaven here on earth. In one sense, it should be a permanent feast: the doctrine of the Communion of Saints recognises that we, the faithful of the Church Militant here in earth, are in communion with the Saints of the Church Triumphant. Catholics pray to them, as do some Anglicans; other Anglicans venerate them without asking them to intercede for us. But either way, we can derive strength and support from their courage, their commitment and their discernment. 

I can understand but deplore the representations of Heaven and its saints in most of the Last Judgement paintings. Hell is graphically and hideously imagined; Heaven has serried ranks of boring and bored-looking ecclesiastics. Of course, the experience of Heaven must be ineffable, and hard to picture; but surely something better could have been achieved? Heaven, if it is anything, is more beautiful than beauty, more joyful than joy, more glorious than glory, and more loving than love. The angels are its denizens; the saints its welcome immigrants. What joy, if this were our future. Imagine . . .

I can recommend the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, in paperback, as an inexpensive source of pleasurable study on the subject.

OH, WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHIN' IN

In between ‘Trick or Treat’ i.e. the Great Candy Gulp, and ‘le jour des morts’ in France where millions of potted chrysanthemums get put on graves, there is ‘la Toussaint’, mainly known here as the date that gives its name to a school vacation. It’s hard to get one’s mind around, rather like the recent maps of the known Universe. All those ‘saints’, known and unknown – and what is a saint, really, anyway?

To some, saints are great people in the faith, who have gone before us, who are in Heaven around God, and to whom we can pray to put in a good word for us, because, after all, God Himself is a bit august for little me to be addressing. To others, all those who genuinely believe and who genuinely try to make their lives conform to the model we have been given are Saints.

In both cases, the Sancti, the consecrated, the set-apart, are a community of which we are a part. So who are the We who celebrate the They, and conversely? We are the ones who are still slogging it out down here (or in here, if you prefer Heaven out there to up there). We are the ones who have to deal with daily brown stuff that hits the fan, and to whom prayer comes in fits and starts when it comes at all.

They, on the other hand, have been there, done that.  Some have been murdered for their faith (alas, we still know about that happening); some have been great preachers who have inspired hundreds if not thousands with their impassioned speech; some have been immense minds who have spent their lives studying God’s thought and meaning in the Scriptures and elsewhere, and communicating their findings to the whole of the Church.

All of them have something to tell us, something to show us, something we can and profitably might well emulate. All of them took their faith seriously. All of them – even the martyrs, I suspect – took their faith with peace and joy and humour. What can they do for us? For some of us, they are the ones who can understand our prayers and pass them on to the Most High. For others, they are models to be studied, venerated, given thanks for, and emulated. In all cases, their stories are worth reading. One of the most delicious books for the coffee-table, the study, the bedside table or the place where kings go on foot, is a dictionary of saints. Not a life but is weirdly fascinating.

They are all around us. We live in a world that breathes creatures beyond our silly senses. Angels, and Saints. And maybe one day we will march in their number: from New Orleans to the Gates of Heaven.