ALL HALLOWS TRIDUUM

Pre-Christian Celts celebrated the transition to the New Year on November 1st and felt that the veil between the visible and invisible worlds was especially “thin” these days. Thus this time of year was seen as a time of enhanced communication between those who had crossed over and those who had yet to cross over.

When St. Patrick and his companions encountered this pre-existing tradition, one thing led to another, and in time we Christians had built our annual celebration of the Communion of Saints upon this earth-based foundation. And so we now celebrate the triduum of:

1)All Hallows Eve(10/31) - Citing Galatians 3:27, each newly baptized Christian, now robed in white, hears that they have “have clothed themselves in Christ.” To a lesser degree, on the eve of the festival of All Hallows, members of the Church onearth are invited to “put on” and “clothe ourselves” as holy ancestors and perform good works in union with and in imitation of the Saints. (Eg., “Who are you going to be for All Hallows Eve?”)

2)All Hallows Day (11/1) – We focus on ourbrothers and sisters in the Church inheaven. Pope Benedict XVI has written about the saints: “Their human and spiritual experiences show that holiness is not a luxury, it is not a privilege for the few, and impossible goal for an ordinary person; it is actually the common destiny of all men called to be children of God, the universal vocation of all the baptized.”

3)All Souls(11/2) – We attend to our sisters and brothers in their “something’s got to give” experience when they are being transformed by grace into souls capable of desiring “all God all the time”. Since such transformation is never easy (in this life or the next), souls in this stage of the journey are members of the Church in Purgatory.

A Soul Without a Body

“A soul without a body is exactly the opposite of what Plato thought it is. It is not free but bound. It is in an extreme form of paralysis.” The human soul needs the body to express itself---not only on earth but in heaven as well. “That is why the resurrection of the body is …not a dispensable extra. When earth separates the two we have a freak, a monster, and obscenity. That is why we are terrified of ghosts and corpses, though both are harmless: they are the obscenely separated aspects of what belongs togther as one. That is why Jesus wept at Lazarus’ grave: not merely for his bereavement but for this cosmic obscenity.[1]”

Welcome to Saint Ann Cemetery,

anAct of Saint Ann Parish.

Here bodies of our beloved await the Resurrection and the Life of the World to come.

Here we acknowledge their mark

on this earth and in our lives.

Here we pray for the repose of their souls

as we pray for the repose of our own souls.

Here we come to seek and profess faith,

to have hope renewed,

and to continue our love in the Communion of Saints.

In and through these bodies

Christ himself has loved and was loved.

[1](Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven. Ignatius Press, 1990, pg. 93).