Saints, Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls Day

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Saints, Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls Day

• Origins, Purpose and Activities
• Prepared by Pat Lavercombe
• Education Officer,
• Religious Education Team
• Brisbane Catholic Education 2008

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Saints?

• While the honouring of saints is one of the most
  distinctively Catholic practices within
  Christianity, it extends back to the earliest
  ages of Christianity.

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Who are Saints?

• Across the history of the Church, there have been
  at least four understandings of saints.
• All who have been saved by knowing and
  following Jesus, whether living or dead.
• Those, having been saved by knowing and following
  Jesus, who have entered eternal life.
• Particular figures, especially Biblical figures,
  who are examples of holiness.
• Those whom the Church, either through custom or
  formal canonisation, has singled out as members
  of the Church in heaven, so they may be
  commemorated in public and private worship.

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The Early Church

• In the early church, all Christian disciples were
  considered holy. (c.f.New Testament)
• St Paul considers members of his communities
  saints.
• The martyrdom of early Christians focused on the
  afterlife and by the second century it was
  already a Christian conviction that a martyrs
  reward was immediate transition to eternal life
  with Christ.

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Patron saints

• By 150 CE memorial rituals at the resting places
  of Christian martyrs had begun.
• Veneration of burial sites pilgrimages to places
  associated with martyrs adoption of a saint as a
  patron of a church or town belief in the power
  of saints to perform miracles on behalf of the
  living all these developed very early in the
  churchs history.

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How would these practices have helped early
Christians?

• Supported them in the face of persecution and
  death
• Models in the way to be Christian
• Promise of the life/rewards to come

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Living saints

• From the 4th Century CE onwards, these practices
  were extended to confessors- people who
  suffered, but not died for the faith ascetics,
  especially celibates wise teachers and prudent
  church leaders and those who cared for the poor.
  
• St Augustine saints are models in the way to
  live and intercessors who pray to God for the
  faithful.
• Excesses and superstitions were present.
• Second Council of Nicaea (787) God alone is
  worshipped. Saints are given simple respect and
  veneration.

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A little too far?

• The cult of relics, pilgrimages and monastic
  piety led to an explosion of devotion to saints.
• Great concern in the Church as local devotions
  spread beyond the control of local bishops.
• Papacy intervened. 1234 CE Church law that no one
  should be venerated as a saint without the
  authority of the Church of Rome.
• Despite this- a great proliferation of shrines,
  feasts and pilgrimages.

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How would these practices have affected
Christians?

• Advantages?
• Expressions of Piety / holiness
• Models for living Jesus, God more remote
• Jesus more identified with the emperor, pope and
  bishops feudal society
• Daily religious practices when excluded from
  Eucharist
• Disadvantages?
• Magic/superstition/fable and legend
• Corruption money making fraud
• Loss of view of God as source of worship
• Christianity or idolatry?

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Reform?

• Cult of the saints identified in the Reformation
  as identified with Catholic idolatry, corruption
  and superstition.
• Protest-ants turned to figures of the Bible
  sola scriptura.
• 16th 17th Century Europe ornate and complex
  liturgies in Latin in Catholic tradition, so
  people turned to simpler devotions to saints.
  Pilgrimages, novenas, rosary and prayers to
  saints for every possible cause became a dominant
  part of Catholic life.
• Devotion to saints, especially Mary, as sources
  of spiritual and material benefits, became even
  more widespread.

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How would these practices have affected
Christians?

• Catholics?
• Same old, same old piety
• Timing of Marian apparitions-coincidence?
• No real reform of worship
• Still alienated from God and Eucharist
• Protestant Christians?
• More bible based and eucharist focused
• Loss of colour in Christian life dour
  /plain religion-few festivals joyless,
  rational Christianity.

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Vatican II Its not about them!

• Lives of saints a view of what is to come, and a
  path to arrive at holiness.
• God and Jesus manifested in them.
• God speaks to us through their lives.
• They strengthen the Church in its mission.
• Cult of saints to be subordinated to a more ample
  praise of Christ and God.

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Changing the Model

• Christ is the one mediator between us and God.
  When the church celebrates the feasts of saints
  it does so not to draw attention away from Christ
  but to proclaim the wonderful works of Christ in
  his servants.

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The New Model

• Old (Feudal) Model
• Us ? Saints ? Christ ? God
• and Mary
• New (Scriptural) Model
• Us and Saints ? God
• in Christ

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The New Model

• It is no longer supplicant and benefactor.
• Saints are fellow disciples.
• They are not situated between us and Jesus
  Christ, but are with us, in Christ, as sisters
  and brothers with whom we share a common humanity
  and a common faith.
• Return to Earliest Church model

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The Communion of Saints

• Originally from 5th Century understood as our
  participation in the blessings of salvation and
  in the fellowship of Gods holy people (St Paul)
• Gradually came to apply to the communion between
  the church on earth and the church in heaven
• Then, and exchange of grace and blessings between
  individuals here on earth and the saints in
  heaven and souls in purgatory (Church militant,
  triumphant and suffering)

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New Interpretation

• The church is a communion of disciples who have
  been transformed by the grace of Christ. This
  communion is not broken by death.
• Back to the biblical model.

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How should these new interpretations affect the
practices of modern Christians?

• More focus on prayer to God.
• More focus on teaching of Jesus and then how
  saints lived that out.
• Saints are models for us. They are fellow
  Christians who have done well.
• Jesus is our one intercessor with the Godhead .
• Catholics and other Christians closer together
  again.

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Halloween

• Halloween literally means the eve of All Hallows
  - November 1st, the feast of All Saints. (All
  Hallows in old English, hallow means to bless,
  consecrate or sanctify)
• The date of Halloween comes from before
  Christianity for the ancient Celts, Oct 31st was
  the end of summer the end of the harvest. Their
  festival, Samhein means end of summer.A symbol
  from that festival is the pumpkin.

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Halloween

• By 43ce the Romans had conquered Celtic lands.
• To the festival of Samhein were added the Roman
  festivals of Feralia- a celebration of the
  passing of the dead and Pomona- the Roman
  goddess of fruit and trees which were celebrated
  in late October. The symbol of Pomona is the
  apple- hence the tradition of apple bobbing.
• Then came Christianity with its tradition of
  locating Christian festivals on or close to pagan
  fetivals as a means of assimilating them into
  Christian belief.

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Halloween

• All Saints day had its origins in the feast of
  Mary and the Martyrs instigated by Pope Boniface
  IV in the early 7th century for May 13th.
• In the 8th C Pope Gregory III moved it to
  November 1st, probably to assimilate the pagan
  festival of Sanheim.
• It became All Saints day in the 13thC at the
  behest of Pope Urban IV.

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Halloween

• The modern festival of Halloween has mainly
  returned to its pagan roots with a confusing
  fusion of all of the old festivals and their
  symbols.
• Ironically, in a nominally Christian society, the
  old pagan elements of pumpkins, apples, witches,
  ghouls and the living dead have claimed back this
  festival, which is now neither pagan nor
  Christian and for which most celebrants have
  little or no understanding.

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All Souls day

• All Souls' Day directly follows All Saints' Day
  and is an opportunity for Christians to
  commemorate the faithful departed.
• They remember and pray for the souls of people
  who may be in Purgatory - the place (or state) in
  which those who have died atone for their less
  grave sins before being granted the vision of God
  in Heaven (called The Beatific Vision).
• Leaders of the Reformation rejected praying for
  the dead. They taught people are saved by Gods
  grace alone.

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Purgatory

• Reasoning for the existence of Purgatory stems
  from the notion that when a soul leaves the body,
  it is not entirely cleansed from the penalty of
  venial (minor) sins.
• However, through the power of prayer and
  self-denial, the faithful left on earth may be
  able to help these souls gain the Beatific Vision
  they seek, bringing the soul eternal sublime
  happiness.
• Souls in the state of purgation will eventually
  gain the Beatific Vision unaided.

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Purgatory

• This is a difficult, mainly medieval concept,
  which has no basis in scripture. In fact, St Paul
  stresses that Christ died once and for all for
  the sins of humanity.
• Across history and between the Eastern, Western
  and Oriental branches of the church views on what
  happens to the soul have changed and remain
  problematic.
• The main issue is whether all the just enter
  heaven immediately, whether they await the final
  judgement before entry to heaven, or whether
  there is a state of purification and maturation
  (East) or punishment and reparation (West).

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Purgatory

• There is an issue over whether reconciliation
  removes the guilt of sin and/or the penalty for
  the sin.
• The whole church agrees that purgatory is not a
  place.
• The Council of Trent affirmed the existence of
  Purgatory in response to the challenge of the
  Reformers, teaching souls in this state are
  helped by the intercessions of the faithful,
  especially by praying the Mass.

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Purgatory

• In the Western Church, Purgatory is based on a
  hierarchical, juridical metaphor rejected by the
  Eastern Church and the Oriental church.
• For modern Catholics, Purgatory may be best
  viewed as an extension beyond death of our
  journey to God. (Remember the modern
  understanding of saints)

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The Journey to God

• Nothingness?Existence?Selfhood?Christian
  Existence?Full and final incorporation into God.
• The suffering of purgatory is similar to the
  suffering of this life, where we struggle to
  surrender our ego-centered self so God-centered
  loving can take its place.

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Modern Concept of Purgatory

• Death
• Faithful on earth? Faithful in ? Saints in
• Purgatory
  God
• Death

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All Souls Day

• Whilst praying for the dead is an ancient
  Christian tradition, it was Odilo, Abbot of Cluny
  (France) who, in 998AD, designated a specific day
  for remembering and praying for those in the
  process of purification. This started as a local
  feast in his monasteries and gradually spread
  throughout the Catholic Church towards the end of
  the 10th century AD.

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What do we tell the Children?

• Halloween
• Not a Christian festival
• Not an Australian tradition
• Based on old religions of the Celts, Romans and
  Vikings
• Some connection to beliefs of what happens after
  death mainly from Medieval times.
• Mixture of images- witches, ghouls, scary
  creatures, pumpkins and apples from those myths
• Of no help to us in our journey to be faithful
  followers of Christ

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What do we tell the Children?

• All Saints Day
• Mainly a Catholic and Anglican tradition
• We honour/celebrate (not worship) heroes of the
  Christian Faith
• Saints are our companions who are part of the
  church (the body of Christ) which crosses the
  barrier of death
• The lives of Saints are one way that God teaches
  us how to live a good life
• We thank God for the saints, who are models for
  us how to live Jesus teaching.
• Some saints have their own special day in the
  church year.
• All Saints day honours all Christians who have
  become part of God in heaven.

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What do we tell the Children?

• All Souls Day
• A day to remember fellow Christians still on
  their journey to God (purgatory) on the other
  side of death.
• Our prayers for them, especially in the Mass, can
  help them on their way to God.
• They will eventually become part of God, even
  without our help.
• We remember people close to us who have died and
  thank God for their lives and express the hope
  that they have completed their journey to God.
• All Souls day and All saints day are ways to
  express our faith and hope about life after death.