All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween, means “Saints’ Evening,” the night before All Saints’ Day. Halloween begins three days during which the Church reflects on the lives of those who have gone before us – those who made significant contributions to the Body of Christ, Christ’s Church. It is thought that some of the tricks, treats, costumes and customs with which we are familiar evolved from Celtic harvest festivals.
All Hallows, All Saints and All Souls, like the fall season
itself, is a time to reflect on the cycles of life and death. And for those who
follow in the way of Christ, it is a time to remember that this fleshy,
time-bound existence is itself bounded by a greater reality of hope beyond
mortality represented and embodied in these saints and souls, a vast company
and communion dwelling beyond time and forever.
Fr. Sam Portaro, in his reflections on the Saints of the
Church, Brightest and Best, observes that laughter is a component of Halloween,
“the crazy laughter that comes of surprise and of fear. We would rather not
talk about the fear, yet it is the fear we commemorate these latter days of
October, when the chill of winter wafts in and around the dying warmth of
summer, when the trees and all of nature echo the theme of death. All the
little hobgoblins in sheets, emulating the spirit world of ghosts and
skeletons, as vampire and all manner of horrid creatures, move us to laughter,
for laughter is our way of averting fear.” [Portaro p. 198]
Yet, laughter has been in short supply the past two years of
a world-wide pandemic amidst an already divided and dangerous world of wars,
economic inequalities, and all manner of mortal afflictions, of which we are even
more cognizant as the evening news walks us through over-crowded hospital wards
of our peers and contemporaries tied to ventilators and therapies hoping to
survive; as doctors and nurses experience the very same PTSD symptoms from
critical patient overload as many of our fighting men and women experience
throughout the world.
On Halloween we attempt snicker at death and dress up to
disguise ourselves as if we might possibly fool the grim reaper. But we are
those people who need not run from our fears. We follow Jesus. The same Jesus
who is depicted walking straight ahead to a truly fearful end in Jerusalem. In
chapter twelve of Mark, his adversaries are doing anything and everything to
trick him with trick questions about paying taxes to Caesar, marriage in the
after-life and all manner of ridiculous things to humiliate him and discourage
his followers. [Mark 12:28-34] Yet, Jesus keeps feeding hungry crowds, healing
all manner of persons from all stations of life of physical, mental and
spiritual dis-ease. Jesus is already living in the very kingdom and reign of
God that he announces wherever he goes, calling anyone listening and watching
to follow him in his fearless journey to Jerusalem.
A scribe, one of several groups of people trying to stop
him, asks him a question: Which commandment is the first of all? Jesus responds
with the Shema Y’Israel: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’[Deuteronomy 6:4-9] To
which he adds a second: “And in your spare time after loving God with your
whole self, the God who loves you and forgives you no matter what, you will
also love your neighbor as yourself, as stated long long ago in Leviticus
19:18.”
Unlike his fellow Scribes, Pharisees and Herodians, this
scribe replied, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is
one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart,
and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s
neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices.” That is, more important than the power brokers who
maintain the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem that along with Rome has monopolized
the wealth and economy of all Israel. The Scribe agrees with the warnings of prophets
throughout the centuries before Jesus who decried this monopoly and
concentration of wealth among the very few in Jerusalem at the social expense
of the rest of those who sowed and reaped the fields that fed them; those who
fished and raised livestock that fed them; the craftsmen and artisans who
clothed them and furnished the homes of the Empire and the Jerusalem
aristocracy. This Jesus is the real thing, thinks the scribe. It’s not the
rituals but what we do for others that demonstrates that we walk in the Way of
the Lord.
The text concludes: After that no one dared to ask him any
question.
To walk in the way of Jesus’s twin commandments of love is
to walk in the Way of the Lord. It is just one way in which we seek the Lord
with all our hearts. And it is one way that we live in communion with the
saints and souls who in their days of decision also walked in the light of
Jesus’s twin commandments of love while facing any and all fears.
May these days of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls
reminds us of who we are and whose we are. As we reflect on the lives of All
Saints and All Souls, may we acknowledge, as Sam Portaro urges us, just how
hard it was for them, and is for us, to look death in the face and say, “I know
you and I shall see you again.” But it is harder still to scan the flickering
light of life’s vitality in the face of a dying friend or relative and say, “I
know I shall see you again.” [Ibid p.201]
May All the Communion of Saints and Souls inspire us to be
those people who sustain the virtue of Hope in a world that often presents
scant evidence that such Hope is justified. May we dare to hope beyond the
constraints of mortality that day by day we might take one step at a time into
the Reign of God Jesus calls us to follow. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment