(re-post from 2012)
My family is blessed to be able to spend All Hallows Eve celebrating the Saints with friends and Priests in our parish community.
I usually make a cute sign out of scrapbook materials to evangelize and let all would be trick-or-treaters aware that we do not have goodies.
Here is the sign that I will be posting (again) this year.
~~~
Feast of All Saints
November 1st
Why has the Church instituted this festival?
To give praise to God in His saints, and to pay to the saints themselves the honor which they merit for having made it the work of their earthly life to promote the honor of God.
To impress vividly upon our minds that we are members of that holy Catholic Church which believes in the communion of saints, that is, in the communion of all true Christians, who belong to the Church triumphant in heaven, to the Church suffering in purgatory, or to the Church militant upon earth; but, more particularly, to cause us earnestly to consider the communion of the saints in heaven with us, who are yet battling on earth.
To exhort us to raise our eyes and hearts, especially on this day, to heaven, where before the throne of God is gathered the innumerable multitude of saints of all countries, times, nationalities and ranks of life, who have faithfully followed Christ and left us glorious examples of virtues, which we ought to imitate. This we can do, for the saints, too, were weak men, who fought and conquered only by the grace of God, which will not be denied to us.
To honor those saints, for whom during the year there is no special festival appointed by the Church. Finally, that in consideration of so many intercessors God may grant us perfect reconciliation, may permit us to share in their merits, and may grant us the grace to enjoy with them, one day, the bliss of heaven.
Pope Boniface IV first suggested the celebration of this festival, when in 610 he ordered that the Pantheon, a pagan temple at Rome, dedicated to all the gods, should be converted into a Christian church, and the relics of the saints, dispersed through the different Roman cemeteries, taken up and placed therein. He then dedicated the Church to the honor of the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs, and thus for the first time celebrated the Festival of All Saints, directing that it should be observed in Rome every year. Pope Gregory IV extended this feast to the whole Catholic Church, and appointed the 1st of November as the day of it’s celebration.
~taken from “The Church’s Year” by Fr. Leonard Goffine
Leave a Reply