Signposts on The Way

Happy Halloween! As winter approaches, the story goes, the veil separating the living and the dead becomes thin. So an ancient Celtic autumn festival recognized the ongoing presence of the spirits of the dead among us—some friendly, others mischievous. This festival easily morphed with the Catholic commemoration of saints and believers who have died (All Saints Day Nov. 1 and All Souls Day Nov. 2). The holiday’s name as it evolved into a civic holiday derives from this connection: All Hallow’s Eve, the day before All Saints, became Halloween.

These two streams naturally come together around the Christian conviction that no believing souls are ever lost to death. Instead, we enjoy eternal life with our God, who has always longed for this communion of shared life with us. Christ showed us the way to this communion, and his self-gift makes it possible. We grieve the loss of loved ones, lamenting their absence in our everyday life. Yet, we recognize that they are still with us in some way that we will experience fully when our earthly lives are fulfilled. These special days celebrate the Communion of Saints.

In our blog going forward, we want to celebrate this gift of community rooted in God’s love for us. It is the theme for our upcoming Gala on Feb. 16 and we especially want to emphasize its importance to us as people of faith as we emerge from the “Time of Corona,” the isolation and personal distancing forced on us by the pandemic. We want to recognize the gift from God that our communion is and encourage a renewed embrace of our connectedness, essential to our thriving as humans and as members of the Body of Christ.

This also marks a change in our blog’s purpose. Originally intended as a resource to help our friends manage the pandemic’s extraordinary demands, it is time to refocus on our continuing path forward as faithful disciples of Christ. We turn to our namesake, Yves Congar, OP, who is a key source for understanding the co-responsibility of the baptized for the Church’s being and mission. His deep historical research brought all these rich themes together, re-emphasized today in the dual focus on the Eucharist and the practice of Synodality. Congar put his research together in the book Signposts for a Theology of the Laity. In his honor, our blog will now be called Signposts on The Way. Our goal for the blog is that as members of the Pilgrim People of God, readers will find inspiration and direction in our weekly reflections for moving us closer to the ultimate communion of life in the Trinity that we commemorate especially over these three days. Happy All Saints Eve!