Fr. Carmelo O. Diola

THE Feast of All Saints is celebrated to honor all the Christian saints, both known and unknown.

In the Greek Orthodox Church, the date is the Sunday after Pentecost while the Roman Catholic Church celebrates it on Nov. 1.

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This feast captures the original meaning of saints as reflected in the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints…”

For Paul, all the baptized faithful are called to be saints or are already considered saints, as he indicated at the start of his second letter to the Corinthians.

It is a welcome fact then that in the Philippines Nov. 1 is when families gather to remember and pray for their dead.

After all, it is not only the canonized saints who are in heaven.

Yet for those who have remained faithful to the end, an even more hallow picture emerges with the sealing of the 144 thousand faithful (the number is meant to be symbolic) clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands.

They have been washed by the blood of the lamb as the seventh chapter of the book of Revelation puts it.

The picture is one of final victory for those who come out of the great tribulation by sharing in Christ’s Resurrection, and are now worshipping God unhindered.

The book of Revelation was written during the empire-wide prosecution of Christians by Emperor Domitian (81-96 A.D).

It was written to affirm Christians in their faith.

In contemporary Filipino society, the Feast of All Saints is now preceded by Halloween in the evening of Oct. 31.

Halloween caters to the lure of the fear factor; after all, do human beings not pay others to scare them out of their wits?

Some people consider this fun and good for commerce.

But is this all there is to it?

Perhaps another way of evaluating Halloween is to contrast it with All Saints’ Day.

Is the consoling picture of the saints who lived the Beatitudes and who reign victorious with Christ compatible with the blood and gore of Halloween?

Is this how we want the dead to be remembered?