Feast of Our Lady of Loreto declared for December 10th of every year

Holy House Of Loreto 25 March 2019 © Vatican Media

December 10 Proclaimed Feast of Our Lady of Loreto

Pope Francis Adds to Roman Calendar

October 31, 2019 19:32ZENIT StaffCatholic Church

The Vatican announced October 31, 2019, that December 10 will be added to the Roman Calendar as the Feast of Our Lady of Loreto. Following is the decree:

Decree on the inscription of the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto in the General Roman Calendar

Since the Middle Ages veneration for the Holy House of Loreto has been the origin of that particular shrine which still today is visited by many faithful pilgrims in order to nourish their faith in the Word of God made flesh for us.

This shrine recalls the mystery of the Incarnation, leading all those who visit it to consider “the fullness of time”, when God sent his Son, born of a woman, as well as to meditate both on the words of the Angel announcing the Good News and on the words of the Virgin in response to the divine call. Overshadowed by the Spirit, the humble handmaid of the Lord so became the dwelling-place of divinity, the purist image of the holy Church.

Closely bound to the Apostolic See this shrine, praised by Popes and known throughout the world, has, over the years and no less than Nazareth in the Holy Land, been able to illustrate powerfully the evangelical virtues of the Holy Family.

In the Holy House, before the image of the Mother of the Redeemer and of the Church, Saints and Blesseds have responded to their vocation, the sick have invoked consolation in suffering, the people of God have begun to praise and plead with Mary using the Litany of Loreto, which is known throughout the world. In a particular way, all those who travel via aircraft have found in her their heavenly patron.

In light of this, Pope Francis has decreed, by his own authority, that the optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto should be inscribed in the Roman Calendar on 10 December, the day on which the feast falls in Loreto, and celebrated every year. This celebration will help all people, especially families, youth and religious to imitate the virtues of that perfect disciple of the Gospel, the Virgin Mother, who, in conceiving the Head of the Church also accepted us as her own.

Therefore the new memorial must appear in all Calendars and Liturgical Books for the celebration of Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours; the relative texts are attached to this decree and their translations, approved by the Episcopal Conferences, will be published after confirmation by this Dicastery.

Anything to the contrary notwithstanding.

From the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 7 October 2019, the memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Rosary.

Robert Card. Sarah
Prefect

The Solemnity of All Saints; a beautiful Holy Day of Obligation in commemoration of the ALL the Saints in Heaven

Saint November 1 : All Saints Day - a #Solemnity Remembering all those who are in Heaven!

All Saints Day

Solemnity celebrated on the first of November. It is instituted to honour all the saints, known and unknown, and, according to Urban IV, to supply any deficiencies in the faithful's celebration of saints' feasts during the year. In the early days the Christians were accustomed to solemnize the anniversary of a martyr's death for Christ at the place of martyrdom. In the fourth century, neighbouring dioceses began to interchange feasts, to transfer relics, to divide them, and to join in a common feast; as is shown by the invitation of St. Basil of Caesarea (379) to the bishops of the province of Pontus. Frequently groups of martyrs suffered on the same day, which naturally led to a joint commemoration. In the persecution of Diocletian the number of martyrs became so great that a separate day could not be assigned to each. But the Church, feeling that every martyr should be venerated, appointed a common day for all. The first trace of this we find in Antioch on the Sunday after Pentecost. We also find mention of a common day in a sermon of St. Ephrem the Syrian (373), and in the 74th homily of St. John Chrysostom (407). At first only martyrs and St. John the Baptist were honoured by a special day. Other saints were added gradually, and increased in number when a regular process of canonization was established; still, as early as 411 there is in the Chaldean Calendar a "Commemoratio Confessorum" for the Friday after Easter. In the West Boniface IV, 13 May, 609, or 610, consecrated the Pantheon in Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs, ordering an anniversary. Gregory III (731-741) consecrated a chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter to all the saints and fixed the anniversary for 1 November. A basilica of the Apostles already existed in Rome, and its dedication was annually remembered on 1 May. Gregory IV (827-844) extended the celebration on 1 November to the entire Church. The vigil seems to have been held as early as the feast itself. The octave was added by Sixtus IV (1471-84). Catholic Encyclopedia

The Unexpected death of Bishop Roger Morin, New Orleans auxiliary then 3rd Bishop of Biloxi

Archdiocesan General News Latest News 

10/31/2019

Bishop Roger Morin, third bishop of Biloxi, dead at 78

Posted By: Peter Finney Jr.

BILOXI, Mississippi – Bishop Roger Paul Morin, the third bishop of Biloxi and the former auxiliary bishop of New Orleans, died Thursday during a flight from Boston to Atlanta.

Bishop Morin, 78, was returning to Biloxi after vacationing with his family in Massachusetts. He served from 2003 to 2009 as auxiliary bishop of New Orleans and from 2009 to 2016 as bishop of Biloxi.

“This is a sad day for our diocese,” said Biloxi Bishop Louis F. Kihneman III. “I was shocked to hear the news.”

“Bishop Morin was a kind and gentle man who truly embodied his episcopal motto as one who walked humbly and acted justly. When I was named bishop of Biloxi in 2016, Bishop Morin was most gracious and accommodating. I am forever grateful for his support, wise counsel and, most of all, his friendship. He will be sorely missed. As we prepare to celebrate All Saints Day, we take comfort in knowing that the Communion of Saints has gained a powerful intercessor in Bishop Morin.”

“It is with great sadness that I learned of the death of Bishop Roger Morin,” said New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond. “Bishop Morin served the Archdiocese of New Orleans faithfully for many years as a priest and then as a bishop before going to lead the Diocese of Biloxi. He had a special place in his heart for the poor and vulnerable and was instrumental in assisting Archbishop Hannan with building the Catholic social service ministries in our archdiocese as we know them today. He was also Archbishop Hannan’s lead representative in planning for the 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II to New Orleans. We receive this news with a heavy heart but entrust him to the Lord. Please keep Bishop Morin, his family, and all those who mourn him in your prayers.”

Most of Bishop Morin’s priestly service in the Archdiocese of New Orleans involved his work establishing and expanding the Social Apostolate, whose roots date back to the 1966 Summer Witness program started by former Archbishop Philip M. Hannan.

Bishop Morin first came to New Orleans in 1967 as a seminarian of the Archdiocese of Boston to serve as a mentor to inner-city youth.

He eventually returned to New Orleans and was ordained to the priesthood for New Orleans in 1971, serving as director of The Center, the first community center run by the archdiocese out of the motherhouse of the Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic on Magazine and Aline streets.

Then-Father Morin later became executive director of the Social Apostolate, which expanded to established year-round community centers, and also director of Second Harvest Food Bank.

The concept of a centralized food bank was cutting edge because most dioceses around the country simply provided food to the needy through parish food pantries.

Bishop Morin used his master’s degree in urban planning from Tulane University to incorporate a more systematic approach to fighting hunger.

Ben Johnson, the president of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce who worked with Bishop Morin for decades at the Social Apostolate, said Thursday his long-time friend was “passionate about enabling people to reach their full potential.” Bishop Morin presided at the wedding of Johnson and his wife Barbara and remained close personal friends with the family.

“He would do whatever it took to help people through education programs, youth programs, and he had a lot of affection for seniors,” Johnson said. “He had a lot to do with small business startups and expanded the commodities and supplemental food programs to include senior citizens. It was a special experience to be able to work with him.”

Hurricane Katrina was one of the somber moments of his tenure as auxiliary bishop in New Orleans. His raised, two-story residence on South Carrollton Avenue just across the street from Notre Dame Seminary survived the flooding but was gutted by a fire police believe was set by looters in the neighborhood.

Everything in his house, including treasured mementoes of the historic 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II, was destroyed. A few weeks after Katrina, digging through the rubble of his residence, he found the twisted, melted remains of the chalice and paten his family had given him upon his priestly ordination.

He was grateful that sacred vessels were meticulously restored.

“In some ways, I think I learned more authentically and truthfully to say at that given moment in time that I had lost everything, but I still had a lot to be grateful for and thank God for,” Bishop Morin said. “I still feel the same way about it.”

“He was OK with starting over,” said Father Jimmy Jeanfreau, a priest of the Archdiocese of New Orleans and a close friend. “That was a real highlight to get his chalice remade and hold on to that. His family has given it to him for his ordination.”

Daughter of Charity Sister Anthony Barczykowksi, the longtime executive director of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, said Bishop Morin “always had a heart for the poor.”

“Anytime a need presented itself, he was willing to go out there and encourage other people to do it,” Sister Anthony said. “You hear a lot today about not just giving handouts, but you do what you can to root out the causes of poverty. He lobbied for change in social structures. That’s such a big need, even today.”

Bishop Morin was installed as the third Bishop of Biloxi on April 27, 2009, at the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the late Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States, and Mobile Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi.

A native of Dracut, Mass., he was born on March 7, 1941, the son of Germain J. and Lillian E. Morin.  He has one brother: Paul; and three sisters: Lillian “Pat” Johnson, Elaine (Ray) Joncas and Susan Spellissy. His parents and his brother James are deceased.

After high school and college studies, he earned a bachelor’s in philosophy in 1966 from St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass., and continued theology studies at St. John’s for two years of graduate school. In 1967 he went to New Orleans to work in its new summer Witness program, conducted by the archdiocesan Social Apostolate.

He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Hannan on April 15, 1971, in his home parish of St. Therese in Dracut, Massachusetts. His first parish assignment was at St. Henry Parish in New Orleans. In 1973, he was appointed associate director of the Social Apostolate and in 1975 became the director, responsible for the operation of nine year-round social service centers sponsored by the archdiocese.

Bishop Morin holds a master of science degree in urban studies from Tulane University and completed a program in 1974 as a community economic developer. He was in residence at Incarnate Word Parish beginning in 1981 and served as pastor there from 1988 through April 2002. Bishop Morin is the founding president of Second Harvest Food Bank.

In 1978, he was a volunteer member of New Orleans Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial’s transition team dealing with federal programs and then accepted a $1 a year position as deputy special assistant to the mayor for federal programs and projects. He served the city of New Orleans until 1981, when he was appointed archdiocesan vicar for community affairs, with responsibility over nine agencies: Catholic Charities, Social Apostolate, human relations, alcoholics’ ministry, Apostleship of the Sea, cemeteries, disaster relief, hospitals and prisons. He was named a monsignor by Pope John Paul II in 1985.

One of the highlights of his priesthood came in 1987 when he directed the archdiocese’s preparations for Saint Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to New Orleans. The visit involved thousands of community volunteers and coordination among national, state and local religious and political leaders. He also coordinated the events of the bicentennial of the archdiocese in 1993. In 1995, Bishop Morin received the Weiss Brotherhood Award presented by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his service in the field of human relations.

Bishop Morin was a member of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development 2005-2013, and served as Chairman 2008-2010. During that time, he also served as a member of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and the Committee for National Collections. In 2011, Bishop Morin received the Sister Margaret Cafferty Development of People Award from the United  States Conference of Catholic Bishops for his work with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.   Bishop Morin serves on the Jesuit Social Research Institute Board, Loyola University, New Orleans.

Bishop Morin was appointed by Pope John Paul II as Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans on February 11, 2003, and his Episcopal ordination was on April 22, 2003. He served as Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Archdiocese of New Orleans 2001-2009. Bishop Morin was named Bishop of Biloxi by Pope Benedict XVI on March 2, 2009. Bishop Morin’s episcopal motto is “Walk Humbly and Act Justly.” Upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75 on March 7, 2016,

Bishop Morin submitted his letter of resignation to Pope Francis. The Holy Father accepted his resignation on December 16, 2016. Upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75 on March 7, 2016, Bishop Morin submitted his letter of resignation to Pope Francis.

Funeral arrangements for Bishop Morin are as follows:

Wednesday, Nov. 6, wake and rosary at 7 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 7, Funeral Mass and burial at 10:30 a.m.

All events are to take place at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral located at 870 Howard Ave., in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Our Halloween Saint of the Day

St. Wolfgang

Wolfgang (d. 994) + Bishop and reformer. Born in Swabia, Germany, he studied at Reichenau under the Benedictines and at Wurzburg before serving as a teacher in the cathedral school of Trier. He soon entered the Benedictines at Einsiedeln (964) and was appointed head of the monastery school, receiving ordination in 971. He then set out with a group of monks to preach among the Magyars of Hungary, but the following year (972) was named bishop of Regensburg by Emperor Otto II (r. 973-983). As bishop, he distinguished himself brilliantly for his reforming zeal and his skills as a statesman. He brought the clergy of the diocese into his reforms, restored monasteries, promoted education, preached enthusiastically, and was renowned for his charity and aid to the poor, receiving the title Eleemosynarius Major (Grand Almoner). He also served as tutor to Emperor Henry II (r. 1014-1024) while he was still king. Wolfgang died at Puppingen near Linz, Austria. He was canonized in 1052 by Pope St. Leo IX (r. 1049-1054). Feast day: October 31.

Catholics should embrace Halloween and reclaim it's true origins, not the secular foolishness of this world

It’s Time for Catholics to Embrace Halloween

by Fr. Steve GrunowOctober 31, 2018

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As we near All Hallows Eve, aka Halloween, we fired some questions at the walking encyclopedia that is Father Steve Grunow, and he responded with everything you ever wanted to know about Halloween and its deeply Catholic roots.

QUESTION: I always figured that Halloween had pagan roots, but you are telling me they are Catholic. Huh? How so?

Fr. Steve: The origin and traditional customs associated with Halloween require no other explanation than that they are examples of the kinds of festivity that served as a means of celebrating the various holy days of the Catholic Liturgical Year. This includes everything from masquerades, feasting, and the associations of a given day of the year with supernatural or spiritual truths.

I would draw a distinction between the violent, macabre imagery that characterizes the modern appropriation of Halloween as a kind of secular celebration and the more traditional customs that are characteristic of a Catholic cultural ethos. The descent of Halloween into the madness of an annual fright fest is a relatively recent development, but the true substance of Halloween belongs to the Church. Halloween (or “All Hallows Eve”) is the festive precursor to the celebration of the Church’s public commemoration of All Saints Day.

There has been an appropriation of the festivities of Halloween by modern pagans, but please understand that modern paganism is precisely modern and should be distinguished from the cults of ancient religions. The origins and practices of the modern paganism do not extend farther back than the late nineteenth century. Also, remember, the term “pagan” is a slippery one. What does it mean? The worship of the gods and goddesses from long ago? Those cults have long since passed away with the cultural matrix that once supported the world views that were the conditions for their possibility. You can’t just reinvent those cults without the culture that supported them.

The paganism that exists today is a romantic and very selective attempt at a re-appropriation of an ancient religious ethos, but it isn’t and cannot be the same thing that paganism was in its original cultural expressions. I think that the practitioners need to justify their beliefs by insisting on an association with what they are doing and ancient forms and styles of worship. This gives the impression that the modern pagan élan has more gravitas (especially in relation to Christianity), but it doesn’t make it the same thing as the ancient cults. The association that modern paganism makes between itself and the forms and styles of ancient culture is more about desire than it is about reality.

I think that the association of Halloween with paganism has much more to do with the Protestant Reformation than anything else. The Protestant reformers were concerned about the practices of medieval Christianity that to them seemed contrary to what they believed the Church should be. They knew that these practices had clear precedents in the history of the Church, but insisted that they represented a corruption of the original form of Christianity that had become degraded over time. The degradation was explained as a regression into cultural forms that the Protestants described as pagan.

I realize popular religiosity is a complex phenomenon and the Church in Europe did intentionally assimilate many cultural practices that were more ancient than it’s own practices, but it did so selectively and with a keen sense of discernment. The end result was not simply that a veneer of Christianity was placed on top of an ancient pagan ethos, but that a new cultural matrix was created, one that was Christian to its core. It is a gross mischaracterization and oversimplification to assert that you can just scratch the surface of medieval Christianity and what rises up is paganism.

And yet this perception endures in contemporary culture. You see it, for example, in works of fiction like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, which appropriates ideas from a lot of spurious, pseudo-scholarship that permeated British intellectual culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfortunately, this has become a standard and widely accepted narrative of how Europe became Christian. It is a modern myth born of the prejudices and propaganda of the Protestant reformation that mutated into the secular critique of Catholicism. As an ideological construct it represents the simultaneous fascination and aversion to medieval culture in general and Catholicism in particular. The reality is far more complex and interesting.

Protestantism was and is proposing what its adherents believe to be an alternative to Catholicism. This means that Protestantism will distinguish itself from the forms and styles of religious life that preceded their own culture and that this culture will be presented as a purified form of Christian faith and practice. One argument that is advanced to justify Protestant distinctiveness is that the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church are pagan.

Placing all this in an American cultural context, the United States set its cultural roots in forms of Protestantism that were keenly aware of the distinction between themselves and a Catholic Europe that they had rejected and whose influence they had hoped to leave behind. Remember, the Puritans left Protestant England for the New World because England wasn’t Protestant enough! The Puritans detested the residual forms of Catholicism that they believed remained in the state church of England.

The arrival of Catholic immigrants to the shores of Protestant America was a source of great cultural consternation. The public festivals of the Catholic faith were characterized as a corrupting and dangerous form of paganism. Halloween with all its carousing and shenanigans was especially problematic, as it represented the incursion of a specifically Catholic cultural form into a public life that was supposed to be Protestant. Everything associated with these Catholic festivities was caricatured as pagan and the association stuck with even the Catholics internalizing the critique and believing that their own customs were holdovers from paganism.

As a result, the distinctly Catholic nature of Halloween became more and more muted and it was Catholics pulling back from their own festival that gave rise to the contemporary version of Halloween. The goulish version of the festival that we have today is in many respects a result of Catholic accommodation to a Protestant culture. And in another strange twist in the history of Halloween, most everything that the devout Protestant detests about Halloween has become all the more pronounced as a result of their protests.

QUESTION: What is the relation of Halloween to All Saints/All Souls? Which came first?

Fr. Steve: All Saints Day appears to have a more ancient genealogy than All Souls Day. 

The practice of a festival day to honor the whole communion of saints, rather than that just a single saint, seems to happen for the first time in the Catholic Church with the consecration of the Pantheon as a public place for the Church’s worship. This happened in the year 609 (or 610) on May 13^th. The Pantheon had been originally dedicated for the use of Roman religion as a place where all the gods would be honored. Boniface displaced the images of the gods from their shrines and gave the building over to the saints of the Church, particularly the martyrs. This was a kind of “in your face” to pagan culture. Boniface was saying that the old gods had been defeated and were defeated by the faith of the Church’s martyrs.

Also, May 13^th was a day associated in Roman religion with what was called the festival of the Lemurs or ancestral spirits. It is likely that Boniface’s choice of this day to claim the Pantheon for Christian worship was intentional and it was a way of saying that the martyrs are the great ancestors of all the baptized and it is their memory and witness that is rightly honored on the day that Romans recalled their ancestors.

How we get from May 13^th to November 1^st is interesting. The festival of All Saints seems to emerge from the dedication of another Roman church that was consecrated by Pope Gregory III. The church is named St. Peter and all the Saints. It was a subsequent pope, Gregory IV, who extended the annual festival that commemorates this church dedication to the whole Church as All Saints Day. The extension of festivals specific to the Church of Rome is a part and parcel of how the Catholic faith becomes the underlying cultural matrix from which a new kind of European civilization would emerge.

All Souls Day (celebrated November 2^nd) seems to emerge with the growth and spread of monastic communities and the practice of commemorating deceased members of monasteries. This practice gained broad cultural traction and in time was extended to the whole Church.

Halloween is the precursor to All Saints Day and as such is kind of like what December 24^th is to Christmas Day. Remember, the calendar of the Church is filled with festival days, all of which were once associated with great, public celebrations. A holy day of obligation has not always meant spending 45 minutes in church for Mass and then going back to work. Holy days were times for a party, and if you look at the Church’s calendar, past and present, with this ethos in mind you will discover that the reasons for a party happened with great frequency. 

QUESTION: I know that there are some Celtic or Germanic elements to the holiday that we’ve come to embrace as Halloween. Which traditions are Catholic and which are not?

Fr. Steve: The festival is not ethnic or nationalistic. It is Catholic. Certainly there were regional appropriations of the festivals of the Church, and Halloween was no exception, but bottom line these festal days belonged to the Church as a whole, which meant pretty much all of Europe. You might have some customs that were specific to regions, but the festival itself is a distinctly Catholic practice.

There are some folks that have come to believe that there is some association of Halloween with a pagan festival called Samhain, but I have come to understand that this association is more coincidental than actual.

In terms of customs that are specific to Catholicism, it is all pretty much derivative from the kinds of stuff that you find in the public festivities of Catholic culture. In this regard, Mardi Gras is probably the best point of reference. We think of Mardi Gras and its attendant festivities as specific to one day, but it used to be that that kind of festival environment occurred with great frequency throughout the Church’s year. Think of all the customs associated with Halloween as a Mardi Gras before All Saints Day and I think you get a perspective in regards to all the excess and tomfoolery. The party was meant to culminate in solemn worship, after which one returned to the routine of life. Unfortunately, the Church has surrendered the party to the secular culture. It has happened with Halloween. It is happening with Christmas. 

QUESTION: What do you think of the trend of parents boycotting Halloween on account of it being evil? What would you say to them if they told you such? Not safety or health concerns keeping kids indoors, but abject opposition to something believed to be satanic or terrorizing?

Fr. Steve: There is a lot that is unsavory about the contemporary celebration of Halloween. What does the singular focus on violence, horror, and death have to say about our culture? The traditional, Catholic Halloween placed these realities within the context of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the devil. The current secularized version of the festival has no salvific content and has been loosed from its theological moorings. It looks very much like a festival of death for a culture of death, and for that reason I can see why parents might be concerned.

But what is the proper response to a culture of death? To lock the Church behind closed doors or to let her out into the world? I think it is time for Catholics to accept the religious liberties that this culture claims to afford them and go public with their own festivals—and to do so dramatically and with a great deal of public fervor. What is holding us back? What are we afraid will happen? The reticence and fear that characterizes Catholics is costing the Church its unique culture and it is allowing the culture of death to flourish. Halloween should not be a day when our churches go dark and Christians retreat into the shadows, but when we fill the darkness with Christ’s light and go out into the culture, inviting everyone to the prepare for the festival of the saints with all the joy we can muster.

QUESTION: What does the Catechism have to say about Halloween?

Fr. Steve: The Catechism has a lot to say about the characteristics of heroic virtue and holiness of life that create the Church’s saints. It also has a lot to say about Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the devil. These are the kinds of things that the festivities of Catholic Halloween should be celebrating with great gusto and panache.

QUESTION: One of the appealing elements of celebrating Halloween as a child, aside from the candy and costume stuff, is the spookiness factor—the thrill of being scared without any real risk. From a Catholic perspective, is that important? Is the experience of being fearful or having an awareness of evil an essential element for a Catholic kid to learn?

Fr. Steve: I think that all cultures employ cautionary tales that are replete with supernatural imagery, and use this imagery as a means of teaching boundaries and inculcating a sense that there are dangerous people and situations that they could encounter and should be wary of. Further, I think that stories told to a group will have the ability to evoke a shared emotional experience and as such bond the community together. It is not only Christian cultures that will employ a narrative, even a frightening one, to communicate their worldview and impart values.

I do think that Catholics need to learn from an early age to look at the world realistically and without the blurring lenses of sentimentality. The world is fallen and finite. People will hurt one another. We are sinners. But this darkness is illuminated by the light of God’s revelation in Christ that makes the deepest truth of what it means to be human available to us in the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of the Lord Jesus. Yes, look honestly at sin and death. Know about the lure and deceptions of fallen, spiritual powers. Realize that greater than all the fallen powers of heaven and earth is the power of God in Christ, which is a love that is stronger than sin, death, and the devil. It is this divine power that is given to the believer in a personal way through Jesus Christ. He is victorious over everything that we are afraid of. His love is stronger than death. The power of his divine life dispels evil. Even as we gaze into the shadows we see his light.

QUESTION: I read somewhere that Halloween is seen as the day when the veil between heaven and earth and purgatory is thinnest, hence the presence of souls. That seems like some seriously “new agey” stuff. Is this a Catholic thing or is that where Wiccans and imaginative Hollywood types step in?

Fr. Steve: I don’t know precisely the metaphysical precedents that one would use to justify the belief that there are on specific days thicker and thinner veils between the natural and supernatural realms. It seems esoteric and speculative.

I do think that the reality that such a perspective represents has great power as a narrative that explains for some folks how they think that the natural and the supernatural interact with one another. Is it true? I don’t know how one would adjudicate such a claim definitively. As such, it remains a supposition or a possibility. 

The Catholic faith describes natural and supernatural realities existing in a relationship of communion or coinherence that is called sacramental. This means that because of the Incarnation of God in Christ, natural realities can express supernatural realities. Physical realities can truly be bearers of divine grace.

The divine grace that is revealed in the Church’s commemoration of Halloween should be our participation in what is called the communion of saints. This communion of saints means that this world is not all that there is, and that those who have passed through the experience of death continue to love us, care for us, and even through God’s permissive will, can interact with us. It also means that that the Christian can hope that God’s power in Christ to save and redeem extends beyond this world to the next and as such we can hope that few of us will be lost causes. The festivities of Halloween should affirm that these beliefs about the communion of saints are real and are also the deepest reality of what this world has become because of the revelation of God in Christ.