I am an absolute party pooper this year.
I would not have liked me last year.
It started when I went on a walk. (I am on retreat this week and enjoy taking walks around the area.) Everybody is decorated for Halloween. Some of the decoration are just fun and silly. Many are quite gruesome. Scary monsters and tormented souls are everywhere. It’s the pained ghouls in chains that make me sad. SAD. I think about it being a representation of a soul that is so mired in it’s sin that it is just plain “lost.” And not lost as in it doesn’t know it is New York, but lost as in here is a soul not getting into heaven.
I know. Crazy. Right?
So where are the saints? Where is the faith as proudly shown off to the public? To balance those who have no embarrassment establishing a tacky plastic graveyard in their front yard, why doesn’t someone have saints on their roofs showing them victoriously entering into heaven? Maybe the could have a good fire going in the fireplace to provide smoke so that it looks like they are entering into the heavens.
Ghouls, perhaps, are politically correct. Saints are not.
Also, ghosts and giant spiders do not require anything of us (except perhaps a scream.) Saints mean something. They stand for something. And in their visage we see a challenge back to us that reminds us that there is a real choice join them on the roof or to join the skeletal arm reaching out of the ground beneath a styrofoam headstone in the front yard. THAT is SCARY.
2 comments:
Father V, Saint Sebastian used to have a contest for the lads to dress as their favorite Saint on halloween, leading up to All Saints Day. I am not sure if this still goes on, but if it doesn't perhaps it would be good to bring it back.
We live in a culture of death, that is why this kind of stuff goes on. More and more people believe less and less in goodness. Shame indeed.
Father, if it makes you feel better many of us have a statue of a saint in our yard year round. I'll admit he might not be as eye-catching as the giant spiders but we have St. Francis looking after us in our front yard.
We just moved to Ohio so I don't know how it is here but back home, it was very common to see a statute of the Blessed Mother near the front door of Catholic households.
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