FAITH ALIVE
By Russell Shaw
(OSV News) – The author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith” (12:1-2).
This passage is a beautiful description of the communion of saints, something so fundamental to the Christian faith that all Christians express their belief in it when reciting the Apostles’ Creed.
A saint is someone who is in heaven – it is as simple as that. While “saint” as a title is reserved to those whose lives the church has thoroughly investigated (typically through whose intercession two miracles can be demonstrated to have occurred), the term applies to anyone in heaven.
Everyone from your saintly grandmother to the martyrs facing death for Christ: They are all part of the communion of saints. The church commemorates all these saints on All Saints’ Day.
The history of the feast reveals a great deal about the church’s understanding of the communion of saints. The communion of saints is the church, both the living and dead.
All Saints’ Day was not always a solemnity observed by the universal church, and is not celebrated everywhere on Nov. 1. The feast originated in the earliest centuries of the church, when Christians commemorated the many martyrs who died at the hands of their Roman persecutors.
Because there were so many martyrs, they could not each have their own feast day; but they were seen as such important witnesses that the Christians did not want to leave any of them out.
As a result, a single commemoration for “all the martyrs” was observed each spring, which celebrated those who did not have their own unique feast.
This is the earliest observance we know about of something similar to All Saints’ Day. Many of the Eastern Catholic churches still commemorate All Saints’ Day in the spring.
After Christianity was legalized throughout the Roman Empire in 313 and the violent and bloody persecutions came to an end, it was common to commemorate the martyrs in various areas around the empire.
We even see this referred to in the writings of the saints, with St. Ephrem (d. 373) and St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) making reference to a commemoration of all saints.
This practice spread far throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, with commemorations of all saints showing up in Antioch, Rome, England, Salzburg and more.
In the early seventh century, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Roman Pantheon – formerly a shrine to all the gods of Roman mythology – as a Christian church of the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs.
Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel at St. Peter’s Basilica to all the saints, as well, with an anniversary date of Nov. 1. Rome adopted Nov. 1 as the date of the feast of All Saints in the eighth century, and in the ninth century Pope Gregory IV extended that observance to the whole of the Latin Church.
Now, centuries later, All Saints’ Day is a holy day of obligation and recognized as one of the most important feasts on the liturgical calendar. However, the celebration of Halloween typically overshadows the commemoration of All Saints’ Day.
Most of us realize that Halloween is in reality the vigil of All Saints’ (“Allhallows Eve” or “Hallow E’en”), but All Saints’ Day itself has become a bit of an afterthought.
It shouldn’t be this way! The saints are our friends, our intercessors, our brothers and sisters in Christ. They care deeply for us, and their lives are recognized by the church as exemplary, as models to follow.
So how can we celebrate this wonderful feast of All Saints’ Day?
Whether you are commemorating individually or in a group or a family, there are many ways to observe this solemnity. The most obvious is: Go to Mass! It is a holy day of obligation, and there is no more appropriate way to commemorate the saintly lives of those who have gone before us than the eucharistic sacrifice.
It is also good to do other liturgical or prayerful things to mark the day: Pray the Divine Office for All Saints’ Day; read the lives of the saints; watch a movie about a saint; pray the litany of saints; think back to your confirmation saint and study that saint’s life.
Similarly, if any of your children share the name of a saint, learn about that saint together: Read about the saint and pray together, asking for the saint’s intercession.
There are also a number of creative and fun games that can be played to help celebrate All Saints’ Day. Try putting on a play of the life of a saint (many Halloween costumes can be repurposed to be saints costumes). There are books for all ages, coloring books and even comic books featuring the saints.
All Saints’ Day is the perfect time to pray to all these holy men and women, asking for their intercession for the conversion of sinners, so that we might all become saints.

(Senz works for Ignatius Press and is a freelance writer who lives with his wife and four children in Oregon.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
In 1979, Sheldon Vanauken published a book entitled “A Severe Mercy”; in it he tells the story of the death of his wife, Davey. The book is an account of an extraordinary romance, cut short while still in full bloom by Davey’s premature death.
This story has intrigued many people, both because of the extraordinary relationship between Sheldon and Davey before her death and because of the relationship between them after her death.
Vanauken describes how after her death he still felt her presence strongly and vividly. She was gone, in that brutal and irrevocable way death takes loved ones away, but he still felt her presence – as real as he had before she died.
In the early months after her death, her presence to him was constant, guiding, sure, consoling, the same as it had been while she was alive. She had died, but inside himself he felt her present – as wife, lover, best friend, soulmate. And during those months he always carried her wedding ring in his pocket, which he fingered tenderly many times each day. Touching it helped keep him aware of her presence.

One day, while on a ship crossing the Atlantic, he felt her presence change. In the silence of his heart and soul, he felt her speaking to him, telling him that, up to now, they had needed that kind of presence with each other, but that this now needed to change. They needed to move to a different plane in their relationship. She was telling him that she needed to “let him go” in the way she had been present to him until now and she needed to ask him to “let her go” in the way they were now present to each other. It was a difficult moment, but Sheldon understood its meaning. He took the ring from his pocket and quietly dropped it into the ocean.
From then onward, Davey was still present to him, but now in a new way. Her presence now was less explicit, though not more distant. Now her presence was less that of the earthly wife, soulmate and best friend, and more the presence of a person who loves you and holds you in a way that’s harder to describe.
Thousands of persons who have lost loved ones to death, including myself, can identify with that story, both in terms of feeling the presence of a deceased loved one inside ourselves, and in terms of feeling this relationship, at a point, develop and move to a new plane.
In my own case, I lost both parents when I was 23 years old. For nearly two years, like Sheldon Vanauken, I felt their presence as sure, guiding and parental (they were still very much my mom and dad, still very much with me); though, in my case, it was not always a consoling and warm presence. The pain of their loss would occasionally bring me feelings and tears that were not warm. My mom and dad were still with me, but at this early stage their deaths still left a cold scar.
However, sometime between the first and second year after their deaths this changed. For me, unlike for Vanauken, there wasn’t a clear moment when this happened. It happened gradually and imperceptibly, their presence to me and within me changed.
But, parallel to Vanauken’s experience, what I experienced was a shift in presence from one plane to another. I still felt their presence, just as before, but now something had let go, even as something else took its place.
I felt their presence now as a deep consolation and their loss no longer hurt as before. I no longer felt a need to pray for them. Instead, now I felt a need (which I still feel today) to pray to them.
They were still my parents, but something had changed. I hesitate to use words to describe this because they might sound vague and wishful, but what I felt can only be characterized this way: They were still my parents – alive, deeply concerned for me, and more present in my life than they ever could be while still in this life. But now I felt that presence as something higher, more universally shared with others, and more tied to God’s love and presence to me. It became harder to differentiate their presence from the general feeling of divine providence that I sense in my life,
I come from a large family. Basically, all my siblings had a similar experience. Moreover, many people have shared similar stories concerning how they continue to feel their relationships with their deceased loved ones change and grow even after their deaths.
Vanauken’s story of an ongoing, developing relationship with a loved one who has died is paralleled everywhere. Relationships continue to grow and develop even after death.
Exotic stuff? No! Tis the stuff of dogma. One of the essential articles of our faith teaches that death doesn’t end a relationship.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a professor of spirituality at Oblate School of Theology and award-winning author.)