Remembering saints
As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, we celebrate Halloween. It is great time to gather with friends, go trick-or-treating, and have fun. Who among us does not have fond memories of making jack-olanterns, bobbing for apples, and making and eating caramel applies and popcorn balls? As kids we all dressed up as witches, skeletons, princesses, and superheroes as we ran from house to house, yelling “trick-or-treat” and holding out bags to gather candy. Great times!
Now, we wait in anticipation for those dressed up in scary costumes to come to our house to get candy. Sometimes we take a few minutes to chat with their parents, before they move on to the next house. It makes me feel great to see so many kids and parents having such a great time, in the dark, with flashlights. It is usually dark, dim lighting, a little rainy, as kids scramble through soggy leaves.
In those days we really didn’t think much about remembering saints. Only later we learned that Halloween was really the evening before All Saints Day. We learned that we took a day out of the year to remember those family and friends who had died. I think we ought to remember also those children who never had a chance to live.
Since the Roe v Wade supreme court decision, about 60,000,000 babies have been killed in their mother’s womb in the United States. We need to remember them. Not only them, but it has been estimated that each year, nearly 40,000,000 babies are killed around the earth in their mother’s womb, most of them in Asia. I don’t like to think about these statistics, because it makes me feel shamed and guilty. While I didn’t participate in any of these abortions, I haven’t done much to prevent them. I don’t think that the human race has done much, either. Abortions will end only when every prospective mother and father have the means to care for their child. In most cases it is not a flippant or easy decision to abort. I don’t know of anyone who used abortion as a means of birth control. At the same time, I don’t know of anyone who has not suffered traumatic effects of having an abortion. It is one thing to ask parents not to abort, quite another to help them to raise the child. Where is the justice in that?
On this past Sunday, October 30, after the 9:30 a.m. mass we met at St. Cecilia Cemetery on Orchard St. to celebrate “Victory of the Saints” with a short prayer service and walk amid the graves. Following this was a trunk-or-treat activity.
“ May the Lord bless and keep you. May he let his face shine upon you and give you his peace.”