All Saints Day

What are you afraid of? Some fear animals such as rats, spiders or snakes. There are those who fear closed spaces, and those who fear open spaces. Some fear germs, some fear heights, there is a fear of birds and a fear of mozzie bites. There is a phobia of phobias (phobophobia) and a fear of long words, (hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – named by a person with a cruel sense of humour).

Then there are the bigger, more universal things we fear, such as disease, pain, suffering and death… These are the things written into our current human condition; the things inescapable for us. We spend a lifetime trying to come to acceptance with these.

Between the physical fears and these universal fears, there is also the category of ‘social fears.’ The fears of rejection, loneliness, and betrayal. In this category we might also place the fear of words (and here I don’t mean of long words), I mean the words that hurt us. We all know how powerful words can be. Words can trigger us. Words can cause wounds or re-open wounds. Words can sink into our core and destabilise us. They can shake us up and they can haunt our thoughts.

As we approach 31 October and the American-imported festival of fear, which has made great in-roads on our own shore, perhaps it is a time to reflect on fear. The secular celebration of Halloween is a celebration of fear. We usually highlight the fake fears of our culture, the garish and the physical, but these external displays, if we have the eyes to see, can point to the deeper hidden fears that reside in the human heart. We fear what will harm us and Halloween, therefore, presents to us a symbol of the things that can harm us, the natural and the supernatural, the finite and the infinite.

Halloween, or All Hallows Eve, is the evening before All Hallows Day (1 November), known in the Western Church’s tradition as All Saints Day. We should note that Halloween by itself is incomplete. It is like ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ without ‘Return of the Jedi.’ It is only with All Saints Day that we are provided with the response, the tonic, the cure, to the fears of what can harm us and fear itself. By celebrating the complete gamut of saints that have ever walked the earth, All Saints Day highlights the common factor between them all, that is, the love they shared, the love that comes from God.

If Halloween celebrates fear, All Saints Day celebrates fear’s limitations when conquered by this divine love, as witnessed in these countless lives. Many saints experienced gruesome deaths. Many experienced incurable diseases. Many experienced offensive words and persecution. Many experienced rejection, isolation and even depression. Love, however, found itself in the midst of these experiences and even if everything else was lost, love never was.

This isn’t all. There is a third day, following the first two: All Soul’s Day (2 November). It’s the day Catholics remember and pray for all our loved ones who have left this life. We pray for them because we hope for them, that they can inherit an eternity with God. Only love can inspire such hope, because in loving we come to know the mercy of the beloved.

Whatever hurt we have experienced, let us remember that we are all loved. It is the deepest truth of our human condition. St Paul reminds the Romans of this truth, and it does us well to remember, that nothing can separate us from this existential reality. Not tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword… “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God” (Rom 8:35-38).

This Halloween, whatever it is we are experiencing, let us remember that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (John 4:18). Let us open ourselves to God’s healing love, a love that overcomes fear and leads us to hope.