Hallowe’en: Autumnal Easter
Hallowe’en enters us into another celebration of Easter, of Christ's victory over death in its application to the saints of God.
As we approach the Festival of All Hallows, we enter a sort of second celebration of Easter. However, instead of focusing directly on Christ’s Resurrection and victory over death, it focuses on how that is manifested in his Body, the Church. Hallowe’en, then, enters us into this celebration: of the present and ongoing victory of Christ, of our promised hope, and of the foolishness of the wicked.
Hallowe’en
Hallowe’en enters us into this celebration, because it is a Vigil day. A Vigil is a day of preparation (usually by fasting) for a major Feast Day. For example, the Feast of the Assumption is on 15 August, so the Vigil of the Assumption is on 14 August. Therefore, if Mass were said on the morning of the 14th, then the liturgical colour would be violet (the penitential colour). We most commonly encounter a Vigil on 24 December, the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord, that is, Christmas Eve.
This is seen in the word ‘Eve’ (or ‘Even’), the day of preparation, that is, the Vigil.
Hallowe’en (Hallow Even) is simply the Vigil of All Hallows, preparing for the Festival of All Hallows. This is seen in the Collect (prayer) for the day:
O Lord, our God, multiply upon us thy grace: and grant, that by our holy profession we may follow after the gladness of them, whose glorious festival we prevent (prepare for). Through.
On this day, we pray that just as all the saints who rest in Christ confessed him as their Lord and God, and indeed lived that confession out in their lives all by God’s grace, so we may do the same in our lives.
The Mass readings for that day especially emphasise this. The Epistle is Revelation 5:6, a vision of the angels and the elders before the heavenly throne, worshiping God and praising the Lamb of God, proclaiming his worthiness to have died for the sins of men and be victorious. The Gospel is Luke 6:17, Jesus’ beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plain. This is to encourage the Church to not only believe rightly but also to live rightly.
All Hallows
The Feast of All Hallows is the celebration of the work of Jesus Christ, who in conquering sin and death, frees his elect people from sin and death. Throughout the year, we celebrate many saints who lived and died in Christ. However, they are many faithful Christians who lived and died in Christ, about whom we do not know. And yet, just like the great saints with their own Festivals, they too are with Christ in Paradise, for having been united to Christ in this life, they enjoy him in the next.
Therefore, on this great Festival, we celebrate Our Lord, who is glorified in his saints (cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:10). We celebrate the victory of Christ being applied to and experienced by his people. And we pray that we may abide in him, trusting in his promises, so that we too may victorious in Christ over sin and death, even after we fall asleep.
Resurrection of the Dead
There is another element of All Hallows which provides fruitful reflection on a very much forgotten doctrine in America. All Hallows celebrates the victory of Christ over death, which means death really has no more sting. In this victory, not a single human person is excluded. That is, the jaws of death are broken so much that he can trap no one.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, athen not even Christ has been raised.
1 Corinthians 15:12-13
The Christian hope is not that we spend our everlasting days as disembodied spirits. Rather, just as God made man as a body-soul composite, also did he redeem man as a body-soul composite. He did so by becoming a man, sharing the same humanity we have, sin excepted. And so since Jesus Christ, as God and man—as body and soul—defeated death, so no man can be trapped by death. The horrible condition of a disembodied spirit will be the fate for no man in the end.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:20-22
St. Paul creates this parallel between the fruits of Adam and the fruits of Christ. From Adam comes death, that is, our broken, sinful human nature, our decay, and ultimately consignment in hell as a broken spirit. And yet, from Christ, comes the resurrection of the dead. And this is for ‘all’. Just as all die, so shall all rise from the dead. Just as Our Lord’s tomb was empty, so shall every human person’s tomb be empty in the End.
having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.
Acts 24:15
St. Paul, against the Jews and to the governor, preaches the Resurrection of the Dead. However, the resurrection of the just and the unjust will be very different. One will be in glory, the other will be in punishment. One will be rewarded as whole person—body and soul—and the other will be punished as a whole person—body and soul. And this will come in the End. In the meantime, both the just and the unjust suffer without their bodies. Though, one is in peace while the other is in torment. It is this middle state, between now and the End, which gives reason for the final day of Hallowtide: All Souls Day.
All Souls
All Souls Day is a day for commemorating the faithful departed. The Scriptures teach us to pray for another so that we may grow into the fulness of Christ. This is to aid each other in our sanctification. But this sanctification and growth does not cease once we die, for none of us die wholly conformed to Christ, full of all virtues and bereft of all vice. Rather, once we die, Christ completes our sanctification. And just as we pray for each other as Christ is sanctifying us on earth, so we should pray for those whom Christ is sanctifying after death.
And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to grant them continual growth in thy love and service, and to give us grace so to follow their good examples, chiefly the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord and God, and the Holy Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.
From the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church
Another motivation for our prayers for the dead is their unnatural state: departed from their body. While not much is revealed on the time or condition between this life and the Resurrection, it is most often described in dark (even if hopeful) terms. And if we are so changeable and easily able to continually repent with our body, it can only be supposed that it is harder after we die. So, we pray for their sanctification, as well as their eventual resurrection, trusting in Christ who works our salvation.
Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.
From the Rite of Burial
Consumerist Appropriation
There has been a panic around Hallowe’en about supposedly evil or plainly consumeristic elements. And, of course, we should oppose the secularisation (or even Satanification) of all Holy Days and Festivals. We know this very well with Christmas. Neo-pagans try to turn it into a polytheistic celebration of the solstice. At the same time, less innovative unbelievers turn it into a celebration of drunkenness, gluttony, avarice, and all sorts of illicit pleasures. Our response is not to end the celebration of Christmas (contra the Puritans) but rather to celebrate it well!
Unfortunately, blatant and unrepentant lies get spread around, just as they do around Christmas and Easter. Just like Christmas and Easter, they try to deceive the ignorant into thinking the holiday is ‘really pagan’. They spin a faux-history and then describe modern wickedness which occurs in some places on that day. It is an affront to Christ himself, who is Truth.
We must remember that the supposedly pagan practices are both (1) recent and (2) unoriginal. Wicca, for example, was invented in the 20th century. Other sorts of neo-paganism and witchcraft cannot trace their history before (if we are being very broad and generous) the High Middle Ages. How could it? Paganism was conquered with the Resurrection of Christ. This is not just what our faith informs but also what history recounts. The oracles stopped being able to give guidance. As St. Athanasius recounts,
And whereas formerly every place was full of the deceit of the oracles , and the oracles at Delphi and Dodona, and in Bœotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Cabiri , and the Pythoness, were held in repute by men’s imagination, now, since Christ has begun to be preached everywhere, their madness also has ceased and there is none among them to divine any more.
On the Incarnation 47
Given that the oracles stopped working, how could they be revived except by a pale imitation of what modern men might think they did? Likewise, if we look at neo-paganism’s symbols, they are shown to be highly unoriginal. For example, the pentagram and the upside-down cross are often trotted out. However, the pentagram is a Christian symbol of the Five Wounds of Christ. This, in fact, is an element in the 14th century work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as the Holy Pentangle.
The shield they shewed him then, of flaming gules so red,
There the Pentangle shines, in pure gold burnishéd.
On baldric bound, the shield, he to his neck makes tight,
Full well I ween, that sign became the comely knight;
And why unto that prince the badge doth well pertain,
Tarry thereby my tale, I yet to tell am fain.
First was he faultless found in his five wits, I ween;
Nor failed his fingers five where’er he yet had been;
And all his earthly trust upon those five wounds lay
That Christ won on the Cross, e’en as the Creed doth say.
Gawain and the Green Knight 2:VI-VII
Likewise, the upside-down cross is simply the Cross of St. Peter, who was crucified upside down. The most these neo-pagans can do is take Christian language and symbolism and try to pervert it for their own devises. But this perversion should distract us from the true things. We should not join them in their perversions but embrace the holy signs and days.
Just as we seek to celebrate Christmas well, we ought to celebrate Hallowe’en well! Not just with autumn colours, orange leaves, and pumpkin spice (any unbeliever can appreciate those things!). But rather with Christ as the centre. He truly conquered death, so we can behold death and not be afraid. A truly Christian heart can appreciate the skull: a symbol of the need to die well and the trust in Christ to save us from death. While others without hope shudder at the prospect of death, we can appreciate the skull, laugh at the devil, and trust in the victory of Christ.
Almighty and everlasting God, who in one solemnity hast vouchsafed unto us to venerate the merits of all thy Saints: we beseech thee; that, at the intercession of so great a multitude, thou wouldest bestow upon us, who entreat thee, the abundance of thy mercy. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Collect for All Hallows
O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful: grant unto the souls of thy servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins: that through devout supplications they may obtain the pardon which they have alway desired. Who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Collect for All Souls