Today is Oct. 31, Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time.
Today at Mass we hear these striking words of St. Paul: “Draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the Devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6:10-12).
At the Dominican House of Studies, the seminary where I live in Washington, D.C., we have a marvelous Halloween tradition. Each year on Oct. 31, hundreds of young people pack our seminary chapel for our All Saints Vigil.
A night filled with song (including chanting psalms) and readings (chosen each year from the lives of thematically selected saints), the evening is a wonderful counter to the extremes and excesses that take place in many places this night.
My favorite part of the evening, however, is the closing procession. With each participant carrying a candle through the otherwise dark cloister of our medieval-feeling Dominican priory, we walk, singing the Litany of Saints.
The evening has a fantastic purpose: to celebrate the holiness of the saints. Our battle, as St. Paul reminds us, is not against the powers of this age. The saints all knew this. They are saints because of their radiant love for God, which empowered them in the face of evil.
Evil is tragically uninteresting — as a confessor, I can assure you of this with great certainty. The tactics of the devil are dreary and tedious. The lives of the saints, however, are full of wild creativity, dynamism and extraordinary ingenuity. No two saints are exactly alike!
As we prepare for tomorrow’s great feast of All Saints, let us renounce again the wiles of the Evil One, which we first decried at our baptism, and embrace again with zeal the extraordinary power of God’s grace.
Let us pray:
Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
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