Dear St. Rita Families,
Halloween is coming up! The decorations get bigger and stranger every year, and it begins to feel as if the motive of frightening others doesn’t always come from good, old-fashioned fun. What used to be a light-hearted way of facing a fear – fear of death, for example – seems to have become something of a belief in death, that death and fear conquer and control. Underneath that belief is a reliance on sheer power as the means of accomplishing goals in life. Cold, calculating control requires a tight grip, with no room for uncertainty. And that is truly terrifying.
But notice that the need to control and the power exercised to maintain that control belie an underlying fear in the one doing the controlling. If things don’t go exactly as I need them to go, the outcome is terrifying to me; therefore, I put all my effort into ensuring that things go…exactly as I need them to go. What a sad, even tragic cycle of thinking! The person who must rely entirely on such diabolical efforts already lives in the darkness and smallness of his own heart. And even worse than this is when a person sides with the darkness, becomes comfortable with it, and truly believes it to be real.[1] I think this latter evil is where we are now in society, and one expression of that darkness is the sinister – no longer playful – Halloween experience.
One of the sad consequences of both of these forms of darkness is that they leave no room for love. Love is creative, unexpected, and can itself be terrifying! The vulnerability required, the entrusting oneself to another (who, unless he is God, is imperfect; and if He is God, is all the more unpredictable), the surrender of control means taking a leap that may not result in a soft landing. Much easier – the inner logic goes – to place trust in that Oh So Certain Death (alongside taxes?). Yeesh.
You remember the origin of Halloween, though – All Hallows Eve. Hallow (like the app!) means “holy”, and “e’en” is a contraction of “evening”. Thus, Halloween is just the eve of all the holy ones…All Saints’ Day! There is no way we’re celebrating death on the eve of the feast of those who conquered death by the Blood of the Lamb.
That said, there is room in our spirituality for a healthy “Memento Mori” – remembrance of death. The month of November is dedicated to praying for the souls of the faithful departed, which is not only an act of charity for them, but it unites us to them, knowing that we, too, will have a generous Church praying for us after we die. But for Catholics, Halloween isn’t quite Memento Mori. Halloween for us is not about the reality of death; it’s about the fact that death can be conquered. And that is the true tragedy of the modern approach – they no longer believe that death can be conquered.
Only the Christian can effectively stand firm against this tragedy. If strict exercise of power leaves no room for the creativity of love, then the creativity of love is the antidote to threats of control and even death. The Song of Songs in the Old Testament proclaims these powerful lines: “Love is strong as death…its flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away” (8:6-7). And what the Old Testament proclaimed in word, Jesus Christ proclaimed in deed. His Love is stronger than death, and with St. Paul we proclaim, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin…but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through Our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:54-57).
Halloween, then, is the perfect time for Christians to proclaim the victory! I don’t necessarily mean that you should put an Empty Tomb in your yard rather than a headstone, though I would enjoy seeing that. Be creative (with love) in your endeavor to subvert subtly the culture of death on Halloween. At your house, you could give out holy cards with the candy, perhaps with one of the Scripture quotes above (see below with an example you can use!). Another idea is to have your kids dress up as one of the martyrs and enable them to tell the story of the saint – St. Bartholomew, for example, who was skinned alive. Classical depictions of him include him carrying his skinned-off skin in his arms! Or St. Denis, first Bishop of Paris, who, after he was beheaded, picked up his beheaded head and walked 5 miles preaching the Gospel with his head in his hands. Or St. Lucy, whose eyes were gouged out in torture, though she had her eyesight miraculously restored. She is depicted carrying her eyeballs on a platter. These examples are gruesome enough for Halloween, and cheeky enough to proclaim Christ’s Victory in a joyful way, especially if your kid knows the story! St. Joan of Arc and St. Michael the Archangel are other fun options.
There are probably plenty of other ideas, too, but the most important thing is that we ourselves remember that while death had its day, Christ has His Eternity, and that is what He offers to us. Hope for that Eternity spurs us on towards love. It gives us powerful motivation to put love where love wasn’t, before. It gives us confidence that, if it were asked of us, we could by God’s Grace even give our lives for love, because Christ did, and He rose again victorious. We should expect nothing less for ourselves!
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen
[1] An example of the difference between these two would be Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Vader rules and is ruled by fear, but Palpatine embodies evil and death. Redemption is easier for the former than for the latter.
