All Hallow’s Eve
Philippians 2:1-4; Luke 14:12-14
I have a friend in Spokane, a really fine man, who has decided to become Catholic. But the other night was the first night for RCIA, and my friend was tired from work, and he just didn’t feel like going, so he started making excuses in his mind.
But something told him to go, he said, and he forced himself, and right away, driving through the autumn leaves and the evening light, he started feeling his heart lift a little. And then, when he got to church, there was a small group of people there, and the priest, and they prayed together and started talking, and by the end of the evening my friend was recharged, rejuvenated.
And on the way home something clicked. My friend is a musician—he plays in a band—he’s a very good guitarist—and he thought, going to RCIA is like learning the scales and practicing and doing what you need to do to learn an instrument, and you do it so you can play, so you can make music.
And the Eucharist is the music. The Eucharist is when you sing.
And you can’t do it alone. You need other people. You need the people at RCIA and all the people in the parish and you need all the people in the Church today throughout the world and you need all the writers and poets and theologians and you need all the saints who have ever lived, the whole cloud of witnesses.
Because what we believe as Catholics is that all the ties that bind us together in this life do not end with death but that the saints in heaven and all the angels pray for us and support us and keep us going when we don’t feel like doing it ourselves, and when we can’t.
And they’re playing, they’re singing, here on All Hallow’s Eve, all the angels and the choirs of angels, and all the saints, and one day we will join them, we will be singing and playing with them forever, and we can glimpse that now, through the Eucharist, we can feel that a little now, on the wet road through the autumn leaves, in the evening light.