All Souls Day and All Saints Day 2011

My brothers and sisters in the Lord, when they approach these days some parishioners ask me about the position of the Church regarding the celebration of Halloween. What is the Catholic way to celebrate Halloween?  When the Church’s Solemnity of All Saints was moved to November 1 (back in the ninth century), it gave Catholics a chance to baptize an ancient pagan tradition. The Celtic peoples used to celebrate their New Year on November 1, and they believed that the spirits of the dead, both good and evil, wandered earth again the night before. To protect themselves from those spirits, they had ceremonies involving costumes and fire –lighting bonfires to keep the ghouls away. On November 1 we honor and ask for intercession from the saints –the dead who died in friendship with Christ and are now in heaven– while on November 2 we pray for the souls in purgatory –the dead who died in friendship with Christ but are still being purified before they can enjoy the fullness of communion with God. It isn’t hard to give a Halloween party a Christian spin, when this is understood. Costumes can be those of saints. Treats can be related to heaven.  Games can be fun, celebrating the hope for eternal life. And that brings us to the spiritual principle at work here. As the Church expanded into pagan lands, Christians had to figure out how to communicate their faith to people with radically different worldviews. Almost always, the most fruitful interaction was that in which the Christians were able to find some seeds of truth or beauty in the pagan practices, embraces them, and shows their more complete meaning in the Christian context. In other words, whenever missionaries met the pagans where they were at, the pagans more easily learned to understand and appreciate the Christian faith. On the other hand, when the Christians met pagan customs only with blanket condemnation, progress was harder to come by. There is a great quotation of Pope St Gregory the Great: «Do not destroy the pagan temples, but instead sprinkle them with holy water, set up altars in them, and place relics there. In the places where it has been the pagan custom to offer sacrifices to their diabolical idols, allow them to celebrate Christian festivals instead, in another form, on the same date. For example, on the festival of the blessed Martyrs, have the faithful make bowers of branches, and organize love feasts there. In permitting the converted these external pleasures, the joys of the soul will be more easily acquired. We cannot wipe the whole post from these savage souls all at once. A man does not climb a mountain in great bounds, but by taking slow, steady steps[1]. Today we are missionaries in a neo-pagan culture, in many ways. If we want to bring Christ’s wandering sheep back into the fold, we need to follow the same pattern of creative evangelization. I hope you can do so this upcoming Halloween ■ Fr. Agustín, Pastor.

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[1] This excellent advice to his missionaries in seventh-century England can be found in his Letter to Miletus, 601