Homily: October 31 - All Hallow's Eve

Romans 8:31-39 View Readings

Psalm 109:21-22, 26-27, 30-31

We have reached once again the end of another month of the calendar year—October, the month dedicated to the rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Tomorrow, we shall celebrate, with great solemnity All Saints Day.  The saints are the holy ones, the ones made holy by God, the hallowed ones.  Therefore today, is “All Hallow’s Eve” from which we derive the word “Halloween”. 

I don’t think the ghoulish masks and the focus on the macabre needs to necessarily be a turn-off for Catholics.  Every great Catholic cathedral had stone gargoyles atop its buttresses.  Illuminated manuscripts, like the Book of Kells created by such saints as Saint Columbkille were also full of little ghouls drawn into the margins. 

We began dressing up like skeletons and witches and vampires, not because we want to emulate these powers of evil, but to show that we are not afraid of them.  Because the grace of God dwells in the faithful Catholic, the light of faith shines for us, even in the scariest of basements, we know that Christ has conquered the death and the devil.

We rejoice as we say, along with Saint Paul in the reading from Romans today, “If God is for us who can be against us…neither death, nor angels, nor powers, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Yes, the enemy continues to tempt us and seek the ruin of souls; he distracts us in prayer, he urges us to focus on the faults of others, he incite us to laziness, and lust, and greed, and to entitlement, sometimes he comes as an angel of light tempting us with pursuits which appear good and holy in the beginning, but which provoke our pride. 

The enemy tries to convince us that we are unloved and unlovable, but Paul insists today that our sins are never too great for God to forgive, that God has spared nothing in proving his love for us, in sending His Son to shed his blood for us to cleanse us from everything that keeps us from loving and serving God.

And that amidst every hardship, distress, persecution, famine, peril, Christ’s love is greater and stronger.  

Nothing can separate us from his love.  Indeed, it is often in times of hardship and peril, that we come to experience God’s love most deeply for in those times we see our need for him most clearly.

May we use our human freedom to serve the God who loves us today to becomes the saints he made us to be for His glory and the salvation of souls.