To my understanding, there are three Church festivals that we celebrate grandly, far from knowing what is being genuinely celebrated. They are Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. Out of these three festivals, the most misunderstood and distorted feast is Halloween.
We are still fortunate that the world associates Christmas with the birth of Jesus. Easter is not directly related to the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, it is associated with new life, bunnies, and eggs. Still, every association falls far short of what the resurrection of Jesus means for humanity.
Come Halloween, the associations are entirely disjointed.
Two sets of children and teens from the neighbourhood dropped into our home yesterday afternoon. Because of the COVID protocols, I paid extra attention to what the kids were wearing, how they had painted their faces and other bits and pieces they were carrying with them. Of course, the child in every adult gets a bit excited about what kids and adults do on Halloween.
Once that excitement wears out, we also wonder how on earth Halloween had come to be associated and preoccupied with witches, ghouls, the macabre, and death.
To humour me, I asked the kids how they planned to celebrate Halloween in the evening. The older kids said they would have a boozy Peanut Butter cocktail, play Halloween music non-stop, go Hocus Pocus Crazy, order takeaway food from Pizza Hut or Maccas and have a scary movie marathon.
I smiled and half-heartedly handed out pre-packed candy bags. I was half-hearted because I’d noticed the younger kids had already eaten a lot of candy and that they would have a huge insulin spike and crash before they could enjoy the evening.
Much later last evening I went for a short walk around the neighbourhood and found some of the adult children who had come to our place sitting outside their homes and doing what they said they were going to do. They were enjoying their Peanut Butter cocktail and food. The kids’ parents, whom I know very well from the neighbourhood, too, were out celebrating Halloween.
Taking the opportunity to start a conversation, I asked them who the saints they would remember on Sunday. They looked utterly blank and asked whether I was kidding.
The parents invited me in to join them for a drink. Seeing an opportunity to rehearse my sermon for today, I said to them, “I will join you on one condition.” Jovially, the parents said, " Whatever you ask, Father.” I responded, " As we celebrate Halloween, allow me to tell you about Church Militant and Church Triumphant.”
“Church what?” they asked. I said again, “Church Militant and Church Triumphant.” Amused, I said, “Something like Islamic Jihad and President Trump, Father?” They asked. “Nothing like that, but something to do with why we are celebrating Halloween,” I said.
By this time, I had already been sitting on a chair and being served a glass of wine. And then, although Halloween music was in the background, I could tell them all about the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant.
Today, we join the Church in remembering and giving thanks to God for the Church Triumphant. The Church Triumphant are those who lived among us, served Christ in the world, showed unshakable faithfulness to God in life, died, and are now crowned with glory in Heaven.
The Church Triumphant are the ones we call saints. The first batch of the Church Triumphant was the faithful Christians from the Church's first three centuries. They were the ones who did not compromise their faith, suffered because of persecution and then were put to death.
When the Christian faith was officially recognised by Emperor Constantine in the year 313, the Church wanted to remember and honour all the Christians who were put to death because of their faith and witness to Jesus Christ.
The number of Christians who were put to death was so great in numbers that it was impossible to remember each by name for each day of the year. And the Church had wanted to dedicate a single day to remember all the saints who had died for their faith. This is how All Saints Day came to be. Of course, Ist November had not been the day from the beginning marking All Saints. Until the ninth century, it had different dates across the Christian world,
When I visited Tunisia in 2018 (for the Anglican Interfaith Commission), I had the opportunity to visit an arena where the Christians were fed to lions and several burial grounds of the early Christians. At one point in the Church's early history, Tunisia had the largest number of Christians.
By about the seventh century, All Saints Day developed as a way of including and honouring any of the Church's saints who had attained “the full status of heaven.” Attaining “the full status of heaven” is also called the “beatific vision.”
As the Church explains it, the beatific vision is the direct knowledge of God, which the angels and the souls of the righteous enjoy in Heaven. It is called “vision” to make clear that it is NOT the knowledge of God that the human mind may attain in the present life. The beatific vision is beholding God face to face, and the created intelligence finds perfect happiness.
In the eleventh century, the Church also thought it necessary to remember those who had lived faithful lives and died but had not yet achieved the beatific vision of Heaven. This is how the day after All Saints Day came to be called All Souls Day. I will explain the meaning of not having attained the beatific vision in a while.
Now, the “Church militant”, which my neighbours thought was the Christian version of Islamic Jihad.
The Church Militant is the living Christian in this world. This includes all of us Christians who are journeying through this life. They have a deep faith in Christ and are battling our sinful passions and the presence of evil in the world.
In other words, the church militant is the Body of Christ in this world. All of us belong to Christ and are fighting the good fight in this world. We are “militant” to stand for the truth, to fight for the good and fairness for ourselves and every child of God. We are also “militant” in serving one another with humility and sharing God’s goodness with people.
In our journey through this life in faith, we prepare ourselves to receive the glorious vision of Heaven, where we behold God face to face. In our service and witness to one another, we also invite others to the glorious vision of Heaven.
Therefore, we meet to worship as God’s people. In worship, we join the Church Triumphant in Heaven to glorify God.
Even though we do not share the same physical space with the Church Triumphant, we are intimately united with them in a spiritual way beyond our understanding. Because we are united with them spiritually, we ask the Church Triumphant for their prayers in the same way we would ask our loved ones to pray for us. Their prayers are important to our sanctification. They continually cheer us on as we “fight the good fight” in hopes of joining them someday.
Don’t forget that among the Church Triumphant are also your loved ones who had lived this life in faithfulness to God and had gone before you.
Therefore, our celebration of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day stems from a deep belief that there is a powerful spiritual bond between those in Heaven (the “Church triumphant”),
Because there is a close and powerful bond between us and those in Heaven, when we celebrate All Saints and Souls, we do not only focus on honouring departed members of the Church and the local congregations. We also honour those who are still living and contributing to the work and ministry of the Church in important ways.
In doing so, we are reminded of how interrelated we are with other people. Our lives are intertwined with the lives of others in ways that we are sometimes unaware of. Whether we like to admit it or not, in the same way, we help each other through this life, others also help us in ways that we may not even realise.
We sometimes like to think we are who we are because we have worked hard to make ourselves this way. That is unless it is something that we do not like about ourselves, and due to those traumatic experiences of childhood.
However, if we are honest, much of what we are as human beings we owe to other people. For example, in the Church, most of us have fathers and mothers in the faith. Sometimes those are our own parents. Sometimes they are people who loved us and were patient with us while we were growing up. Some may have been teachers, priests, youth ministers, Sunday School teachers who in small or large ways helped us grow and nurtured us, in life and in the faith.
We must recognise that we always stand in a larger community than just those around us daily. For those who are older, many people who shaped our spiritual journey are gone now. But this is the time of year, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, that the Church invites us to remember our fathers and mothers in the faith. We truly are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, the Church and its people across the centuries who were faithful to God and to us (Hebrews 12:1).
Hence, today and tomorrow are valued times to celebrate those Christians of the past who faithfully transmitted the faith to us.
Now to comment on those who had lived a faithful life but may not yet have attained the beatific vision.
For a very long time, I had struggled with this teaching. The idea that those who pass on from this life may need to be purified or perfected to join the Church Triumphant in Heaven is very ancient. The idea is found in the Old Testament, Jewish thought, and Plato and his predecessor philosophers. The idea is also expressed by the early great Church Fathers like Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom and Augustine.
After having read extensively on this idea, I have come to appreciate the teaching.
As I just shared with you, the Church on this side (Church Militant) and the church on the other side (Church Triumphant) are deeply spiritually bonded. If we are so deeply connected, our lives in faith must be on a continuum, progressing closer to God each day in love to behold him face to face. There can’t be shortcuts.
Perhaps it is like wanting to see and be with a loved one in another country while the COVID pandemic is still on. So, if we are to travel to that country, we will need to spend a fortnight in quarantine before we can be united with our loved one. I’d rather happily volunteer to be quarantined rather than take a disease-ridden agent with me to a place where it is disease-free.
I would take up the opportunity, thankfully to God, to purge myself of anything that is not of Heaven or the Community of Church Triumphant before I am welcome there. If I were to die before making myself worthy of being admitted to Heaven, I would rely on the prayers of my loved ones here to pray for my journey to Heaven. This is the idea found in the Old Testament (2 Maccabees, 12:26 and 12:32)
The great British Christian writer C S Lewis called this brief quarantine stopover the “washroom of Heaven”.
It is said that God’s angels are there to offer hospitality and support. In the teaching of the Church, this community in “quarantine” is called the “Church Penitent.” The members of the Church Penitent rely heavily on the prayers of the Church Militant so that they may proceed to their eternal embrace with the Lord.
Today, let us remember with love and thanksgiving to God for the saints of all ages who had lived among us and testified to the life God has called us to live in Christ. A special cheer and remembrance of the saints we’d known in our lives and are now beholding God face to face in Heaven. So while cheering them, ask them to pray for you to strengthen you in this life and earn the beatific vision in Heaven.
Tomorrow, let us remember all our loved ones who had gone before us, whether they were saints or not. If some of the loved ones gone before were not saints, be assured that God’s mercy and goodness, he will receive them to the Community of Church Triumphant. Pray for them and remember them with love.
Tomorrow, also remember and pray for special people in your lives who are still with us. Thank God for all the good they’ve done for you and continue to do.
We all -- the Church Militant, the Church Penitent and the Church Triumphant -- are together in the life of God. The Church Militant is our journey in this life; the Church Penitent is our stopover, if necessary; and the Church Triumphant is our destination. Amen
