Because All Saints Day is a solemnity and a holy day of obligation, the Church’s official prayers begin with a vigil the evening before, on October 31.
On All Saints Day, the Catholic Church honors all of God’s saints, even those who have not been canonized by the Church. All Saints Day is celebrated on November 1.
The Church joyfully celebrates that these holy men and women experience the fulness of life with God in Heaven for eternity and asks for their prayers so that we may join them someday.
Holy people are referred to as “hallowed” so the evening (e’en) before became known as All Hallows Eve or Hallowe’en.
Halloween is part of Allhallowtide, three days of remembering the dead which includes All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day on November 2.
Halloween is the vigil of a great holy day:
The eve of the celebration of all the saints:
Halloween is part of Allhallowtide:
Preparing for the feast on the evening before:
This evening I will descend into the crypt of St Peter’s to pray near the tombs of my Predecessors who are buried there. Spiritually, I will visit in pilgrimage the cemeteries of the world, where they sleep who have gone before us with the sign of faith and await the day of the resurrection.
Pope John Paul II, Angelus Address, November 1, 2001
The joyful Jewish roots of Halloween:
Trick or treating for the dead:
Communion with the dead. “In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead; and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them.” Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 958
Being a saint involves laughter and joy:
Catholics shouldn’t celebrate darkness:
And do this because you know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness [and] put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.
Romans 13: 11-14
Images of death can be very Christian:
Imagining evil and glorifying evil are not the same:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
The Catholic Church is the whole thing:
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