By Jeffrey A. Beer Jr. –
This Sunday people’s houses will be decorated with spider webs and jack-o-lanterns and young and old alike will dress up as celebrities, witches, superheroes and anything else they can think of. When I read through the scripture passages for this Sunday, do you know what correlation I found with Halloween? Absolutely nothing. Well, at least not at first. But when I went back and read through them again, I realized a certain theme is present in this Sunday’s readings: that God created us to be good, and so he forgivingly helps us become better- become more truly ourselves, the way he made us.
The first reading from the eleventh chapter of Wisdom says, “But you have mercy on all…For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made…How could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?” St. Paul says in his second letter to the Thessalonians, “We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith.” These are messages about change and growth, but they are also lessons about who we are to God as his creation and as his children. This theme continues in the Gospel, when Jesus goes to stay at the house of a dishonest, greedy, and wealthy tax collector named Zaccheaus. Because of his encounter with Christ, Zaccheaus repents and makes a complete 180 degree turn saying, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over.” Christ becoming a part of his life caused him to change; caused him to act more as God intended him to.
You might still be wondering what all of this has to do with Halloween. Although we might pick one day a year to dress in the extravagant, creative, and flashy, the truth is that our entire lives are about acting like something else. We know that God created us in His image; that he created us to be good, and loving, and generous and just. We know that when we obey God and try to live His way, we are behaving the way we were made to. But we don’t always act this way. And while we may not have a Lady Ga-Ga mask on, when we act differently from the guidelines God has given to us, we are acting not like our true selves, but like someone else. And when God becomes a part of our lives, it should make us take the mask of a false life off, and change, just the way Zaccheaus did when he met Jesus.
Halloween originates as “All Hallows Eve” because it was a celebration the night before All Saints’ Day. For years, Christians would dress up as saints. Not only do we not typically dress up as saints anymore, even on the other 364 days a year we probably do more to emulate celebrities than we do to become more like the saints. But the saints are a lot closer than we think. The reason we celebrate All Saint’s Day is to honor people who lived as God intended them to, but also to emphasize the connection we believe we still have with “The Communion of Saints.” Many of the saints seem distant because they lived long ago, or because their holiness seems unobtainable. But the saints were ordinary people with the same temptations, struggles and mistakes as all of us. The difference is that when God became a part of their lives, saints allowed their faith to truly change them, and took off the masks they were wearing. So even as we go to costume parties and go trick-or-treating this weekend, let’s not fail to remember our faith should bring out the saint in all of us.