The end of October and beginning
of November is a time when we think about the completeness of God's holy Church. The Church of God, his Mystical Body, has
three branches, each under the dominion of Christ the King, whose feast we
celebrated a couple of days ago on the last Sunday of October. Our November now begins with its celebration
of all the saints in heaven, the Church Triumphant. No sooner does this feastday come to an end
than we commemorate tomorrow all the holy Souls in Purgatory, the Church
Suffering. Finally, as soon as the
Octave Day of All Saints is over, we celebrate on November 9 the Dedication of
the Mother and Head of all the churches in the world, the Pope's own church,
the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior, known more commonly as the Lateran
Basilica. This church is the very
epicentre of our Church Militant.
To belong to this great communion
of saints, the Holy Catholic Church, is a great privilege which none of us
deserve by our own merits. That we have
been chosen by God to be the recipients of this unparalleled grace should fill
us with awe, thanksgiving, and, perhaps surprisingly, dread. Why dread?
Because to be a Catholic is a privilege, and like all privileges it
comes with responsibilities. When the
day of judgment comes, we cannot feign ignorance, like the pagans, about the
things of God. We cannot claim that our obligations
are limited to following only the natural law.
As Catholics we are bound to obey not only the laws of nature, but all
the laws of God and of his Church. Under
pain of sin, we must follow all the laws of fasting, of attending Mass, of
supporting our clergy, of receiving the sacraments regularly, and so on. Not only must we avoid sinning, but in
addition it is our solemn duty to obey our divine Saviour's command that we
seek after perfection, practicing all the virtues to the best of our
ability—humility, patience, mercy, charity and so on. We must learn the faith as best we can, and
come to know God so that we may better love him and serve him.
Some of us may come to regard all
these extra obligations as onerous burdens, and blasphemously wish for the
easier lifestyles of the ignorant outside the fold of the Church. Like ungrateful wretches we are tempted to believe
our lives would be improved if only we didn't have the duties of a life imposed
on us through our baptism into the Catholic Church. To give into such temptations makes us no
better than animals—swine to whom God has had the loving mercy to entrust his
pearls of grace. It makes us blasphemers
of an especially thankless and unappreciative kind, who throw back into the
faces of our Creator the wonderful gift of salvation that he offers to us
through our membership of the Church. We
should expect the appropriate judgment when the time comes to surrender up to
God a life spent gratifying ourselves in defiance of the commandments we know
to be from him.
There are, alas, so very many
Catholics who fancy they can live whatever lifestyle they please, choosing
which of the Church's teachings they feel like believing, opting to follow or
not follow the ethical principles of the Church as their moral turpitude
dictates. In and amongst the holidays I
mentioned above that celebrate the three branches of the Church Militant,
Suffering and Triumphant, there is another day that belongs to these blasphemers,
as well as to all the devils of hell, and that day is Halloween. Let's remember that behind all the innocently
spooky nonsense of that day, its costumes and trick-or-treating, there lurks a
deeper evil celebrated the world over by those for whom the Devil represents
not a dark and dreadful minister of evil, but the symbol of their own
self-gratification and pursuit of pleasure.
It is not by chance that the Church chose to celebrate its own
triumphant feast of All Saints the day after this pagan festival, supplanting
and stifling this reminder of our own dark past, the days before Christ visited
and redeemed his people, when Satan truly ruled the world.
After last night's ghouls and
goblins, we greet today the light of Christ's elect, the holy saints of
heaven. They bring light because they
followed the light of the world, who is our Lord and Saviour. They bring light because they were set alight
with Christ's love for his heavenly Father, because they were temples of God's Holy
Spirit in the very highest sense. If we
wish our souls to enjoy the blessed light of glory in heaven, we should follow
these lights of the Catholic Church. These are the true "stars" of the
world. Not the stars of Hollywood, mere
celebrities, who these days give off no light at all, but rather the stench of drugs,
debauchery, and the demonic.
Each of our heavenly stars, on
the other hand, once living, breathing individuals like ourselves, had his or
her particular charism of virtue. Some
are celebrated for their simplicity, like St. Francis, others for their great
insights into the things of God, like St. Thomas Aquinas and the other great
doctors; some for their generosity and care of the poor, like St. Nicholas, St.
Wenceslas, and so many more; others for their willingness to follow in Christ's
sufferings, like St. Peter and all the holy martyrs. But one thing they all have in common is the
light with which they burned, that light of the Holy Ghost, which is the very
love of God himself.
Today's feast celebrates them
all, and we rejoice to do so. More
important still, today's feast invites us to join them by leading a life worthy
to receive a heavenly crown like theirs.
Our task today is to embrace the duties and responsibilities placed upon
us by our membership of the Church Militant, willingly and lovingly carrying
the many crosses of this life, and venturing forth along the path of holiness
and perfection, as the burning lights of God's firmament, his future saints.
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