Celebrating the Light and our Heroes of Faith

The older I get, and closer I've become with my Lord, the sweeter and more peaceful is my journey. I'm consistently drawn to His Light. I steer clear of darkness and anything that is remotely identified with evil: ghosts, goblins, witches, skeletons,, and paranormal. For that reason, I am so thankful that Halloween is over! Bring on the bright Light of Christ! Talking, walking and living in the Light is my number one priority. The more familiar I've become with THE LIGHT, the more I shun darkness of any kind!

“Halloween” is a contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve,” the evening before All Saints’ Day. The trick or treaters are celebrating all that candy they retrieved yesterday. But, this day, November 1st (BTW – Happy November!!) we get to focus on saints. This tradition began in AD 609 and encourages us to remember and emulate the heroes of faith. What a gift it is to us that there were those who paved the way for us with lives devoted to God and were Light-bearers of Christ and many of whom were martyred for their faith in Him.

Tomorrow, November 2nd is All Souls’ Day. Both of these days touch me so much -- two beautiful days of celebration. Those of us who have a relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ, look at death as leaving our “temporary” home on earth to go to our home sweet, eternal home in heaven. There are many who consider death an unpleasant topic and don’t even want to discuss the subject. Some people even refuse to make a will because that forces them to consider their mortality. Of course, none of us like the idea of someone we deeply love dying, except for knowing they are no longer suffering.

Here’s the positive way of looking at death. This earth has been our “boot camp” for the real deal. It's the "holding room" for the ride of our life. The older I get, the more I embrace getting closer to that "ride". You and I, and everyone we love is going to die, so if death is going to eventually come and take us away, then death had better be our friend and not our enemy. All Saints Day and All Souls Day offer us a wonderful consoling and beautiful way of looking at death. On All Saints Day, we celebrate the glory of the saints in heaven. The Church teaches that everyone in heaven is a saint. There are many men and women, who are canonized (official) saints, and each one has a day assigned to them. On All Saints Day, we celebrate everybody else in heaven. Think of our loved ones who have died and gone to heaven. This is a chance for us to be happy for, and with them. You and I rejoice that they are happy being with God and everyone else in heaven. They have no pain, no frustration, and all they know is absolute, complete happiness because they are in the presence of God. We rejoice with them on this day!

On All Souls Day, we acknowledge our loved ones who died and we embrace our memories with them and the great hope of meeting up with them in heaven. On this day, I purposely recall my precious grandmother who introduced me to my future husband, my firey-preacher grandfather, my angel mom, and wonderful dad, my beloved husband and so many others who influenced and impacted my life. On this day I get to admit that I miss them and I’m not even ashamed to shed a few tears for them. After all, Jesus wept over the death of His friend, Lazarus. I don’t shed tears because I lack faith or because my faith is weak. I shed tears because I miss them. It's okay. It's just temporary for me because I carry on with the joy of seeing them one day soon! I continue to let Jesus make sense of it all for me! How about you?