It’s that day of the year again. The First of November. We card-carrying Catholics conscientiously consult the parish bulletin and mull over our work and school schedules, wending our way dutifully to church in fulfillment of the Holy Day of Obligation. With a regretful sigh, wage earners surrender an hour of sleep to be able to make an early-morning commuter Mass or forego their lunch hour to catch one at the cathedral downtown. Mothers in the throes of meal prep develop ingenious solutions to make sure their children’s stomachs are properly filled before a 5:30 dinnertime Mass, with enough of a time gap so that the one-hour fast before Communion can be properly observed.
On this illustrious day which mingles the Churches Militant, Triumphant, and Suffering in a blaze of glorious unity, we typically stumble into the sanctuary cranky, rushed, and bleary-eyed. How many of us have felt, at one time or another, just an iota of indignation as we scan the sparsely filled pews around us, feeling like the rearguard of true worshippers. We shake our heads ruefully in solidarity with the Elder Brother of the Prodigal Son, resentful that no feat of jumping through the hoops of canon law will impel the Lord to kill the fatted calf for us. In our heart of hearts, we acknowledge that it is an infantile way to behave, and we choke down our bitterness, but the ungracious thought surfaces nonetheless. The glory of the moment fails to envelop us: as the lector solemnly intones the description of a vast multitude in white robes, we may very well be craving a cheeseburger. It has been a long time since lunch.
The Lord summons us to a stunningly different posture of worship. Witness the description of David’s behavior before the Ark in 2 Samuel 6:3-5:
They transported the ark of God on a new cart and took it away from the house of Abinadab on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the cart, with Ahio walking before it, while David and all the house of Israel danced before the Lord with all their might, with singing, and with lyres, harps, tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals.
David’s dancing before the Lord is so uninhibited that it mortifies his wife Micah, who has heretofore been described in Scripture as a woman of prudence and virtue. However, “When she saw King David jumping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart” (2 Samuel 6:16). The ensuing exchange between the couple drastically alters that previously favorable characterization of Micah, portraying David’s consort as a woman whose heart is closed off from the joy of the Lord. Her hardness of heart, in fact, will be the cause of her lifelong barrenness—a moral that convicts us as well, entrenched in our mindset of religious drudgery, of boxes dutifully checked off.
In Acts 2, when the Spirit descends upon the Apostles at Pentecost, their intense delight provokes a similarly contemptuous response in some of the onlookers, who dismiss them as irresponsible drunkards. We are called to adore our Master with hilarity, with abandon. Would anyone seeing us leave the Church after All Saints’ Day Mass mistake one of us for an irresponsible drunkard?
Of course, even Jesus Himself was not exempt from criticism for his embrace of a joyful life:
Then the disciples of John approached him and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast [much], but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast (NABRE, Matthew 9:14-15).
Most “serious” Catholics are well schooled in the Lent/Easter dichotomy. The privation and self-denial of the Lenten season is meant to give way to the intense celebration of Easter. Sadly, though, we often fail to incorporate this reality into our weekly observance of Sunday, the “Little Easter.” Mom or Dad thinks guiltily, “I know we should spend time together as a family, but the grass really needs cutting.” Daily indulgence in the pre-packaged treats that are always lying around the house robs a lovingly-prepared Sunday dessert of its special sweetness. I speak from my own experience here, but perhaps you can supply your own version.
In a climate of eternal sameness, which has exchanged the dramatic changing of the seasons for a steady course of sunny, 65-degree days, it is difficult to notice the weather after a while. Likewise, when our hearts are equally alienated from fasting and feasting, it is easy to dismiss the Holy Day as “just another day,” with the mildly irksome requirement of an extra appearance at the Lord’s table.
But what if we embraced a completely different approach?
About twenty years ago, I stayed with a large Catholic family on the West Coast. Having many siblings myself, I recognized the paradigm without difficulty and settled very comfortably into their chaotic, loving routine. However, no family does everything quite the same way, and one of the things my West Coast friends did very well was All Saints’ Day.
A day or two before November 1, the older girls and their mother stripped a little antique buffet in the hallway of its usual knickknacks. Bringing a box down from storage, they opened it and pulled out a length of black cloth festooned with glowing stars. This prop they attached to the wall behind the buffet, draping it carefully over the front. Then, we all reached into the box and began removing innumerable figurines of various sizes and styles, arranging them on top of the cloth. Each statuette represented a little saint—Peter, Maximilian Kolbe, the Little Flower, Joachim and Ann. I got the sense that this collection had been added to over many years, and this decoration of the saints’ table was a treasured annual ritual. Each item added to the display rekindled my enthusiasm for these holy helpers, known and loved since my youth.
I have never been in another home in which the family carried on this wonderful little tradition, and I can’t imagine why. What curious little one could resist poring over the gallery of tiny people in curious costumes? Even if a few saints got broken in the process, it would be a catechism lesson worth having.
In my own parish, Holy Day observance has suffered the same fate as it has in parishes all across America. Aside from a bulletin announcement during the previous Sunday, little notice is given of the extraordinary nature of these days—and remember, HDO’s are primarily feast days. As a religious education teacher, I was particularly concerned that many of our young families have no sense of connection to days like All Saints Day. Reaching out to the youth minister at a nearby parish, I suggested that we could take turns hosting Mass-goers at a festive gathering on the evenings of Holy Days.
This devoted woman, who over the years has established a strong connection to the youth of her parish, responded enthusiastically by planning an All Saints’ Day party for families last November. She was ably supported by the pastor, who also has a deep love of the saints. Naturally, the evening began with Mass—the source and summit of all joy in the Christian life.
Afterwards, many high school students from the youth group organized snacks and activities for the children, including a series of skits highlighting the lives of popular saints, several rounds of “Holy Bingo,” and a “Count the Candies” contest with jars of sweets, each representing a particular saint. (Guess whose jar was filled with Swedish fish?) Adults and little ones showed up decked out as their favorite intercessors for a costume contest. One young man garbed as Moses meandered comfortably through the crowd with a crooked walking stick and a long beard. Toward the end of the night, after consuming copious amounts of sugar, children in medieval robes or millennial Carlo Acutis blue jeans darted gleefully around the school gym in little packs while their parents chatted in a companionable way. It was a satisfying antidote to the lurid atmosphere painstakingly cultivated by some neighbors during the previous night’s Halloween trick-or-treating.
Do we need statues and parties to truly observe All Saints Day? Of course not! However, as physical beings, we are greatly impacted by the traditions we tend. Moreover, these small practices point undeniably to one central truth. To fully live the Holy Day, we must conscientiously prepare to enter into the mystery…for the fruit of that preparation can be true, unbridled, intoxicating joy. A feast is not an impromptu bite at the McDonalds drive-thru. We should take the time to celebrate All Saints Day with every fiber of our being—with the proverbial lyres, tambourines, and cymbals. Happy All Saints’ Day—now dance before the Lord!
2 thoughts on “It’s a Feast Day, For Crying Out Loud”
Poster’s take on 2nd Samuel is thought-provoking. Going yet further “into chapter and verse,” we see that David himself is taken aback by the unexpected death of Uzzah, asking in fear, “How can the Lord Himself come to me?” However, Old Testament theology is inherently incomplete. The lives of the saints themselves prove that God willingly comes to His people, as individuals, with ardent, all-consuming love. Despite the tragedies and terrors of human existence, this reality calls for renewed celebration with prodigality and pomp. In the sacrifice of Christ, Death itself starts to work backwards. Gotta dance!
The author’s lament over the abandonment of HDO’s and how it might grate, producing unchristian emotions to rise, seems to me like a resentment. Take one who knowingly treats their body with contempt, develops a terminal illness from it and suffers painful, pathological effects. It would be incorrect to resent the conditions brought on by them. After all, it occurred for logical, easy to discern reasons. So too, the empty pews, but for reasons that are not easy to divine. Back to Samuel, go a little bit further into chapter and verse, right smack dab in the middle of David’s dance, and see the irrational tragedy as one of the select few, among thousands of celebrants, raises his hand to steady the heavy ark, swaying under cavalier forces; and God strikes him dead – maybe he just had a heart attack. Imagine the dance coming to an abrupt halt, the music quickly fading as his family, friends, even David, rush to render futile aid. That’s how that jubilation ended. Putting events in full context may raise questions that at times cast a pall on even the most fitting of feasts.