All Saints and All Souls

Each year at this time we are surrounded more and more by the bogus ‘trick-or-treat’ paraphernalia of Halloween. Supermarkets, card shops, and even garden centres try to get us to part with cash by selling all sorts of objects associated with spooks and ghosts and witches. It’s laughable that people are prepared to buy into all this nonsense, but then as the great commentator, Chesterton, once said: ‘Once you’ve stopped believing in God you’ll start believing in anything’.
The Christian message is contained in the two great celebrations we observe in the next few days: All Saints and All Souls. These feasts tell us that the dead are not to be feared but to be loved. They are still part of the Church, in fact they are more so then we who are on earth. The saints and the holy souls are closer to Christ than we are ourselves.
We need to recover the conviction that the Church is far more than what we see at the present time. It is universal not just across space but across time. We are part of the only community that transcends those human limitations. In Christ we are bound together with those who have gone before us, both saints and sinners. May the saints and the holy souls pray for us as we make our earthly pilgrimage to our heavenly home. P.D.