This coming week, we celebrate Halloween, of course. “Halloween” is just short for “All Hallows’ Eve”,
which means it is the day before the celebration of “All Hallows” or “All Saints” Day on November 1st. All
Souls’ Day follows the next day on November 2nd. And for some, those Catholic celebrations of All Saints
and All Souls are the real spooky ones! What is it with the Church’s focus on those who have died? When
we pray to the saints, are we trying to speak to some kind of zombie-people?
In his interaction with the Sadducees in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus reminds them of the resurrection of the
dead. “As for the dead being raised,” he says, “have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not God of the dead but of the living” (Mark 12:26-27). In other words, if God is God of the living, that means Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are living, not dead. They have been raised.

Yes indeed, the saints are not dead, but alive! Unimaginably more alive than you and I, in fact! In heaven,
the saints experience the perfect fulfillment of their nature, the purpose for which they were created. A knife has been created to cut, a lamp has been created to illuminate, and the human person has been created to worship. We were created to live in eternal union with God, and we are not truly “human” until we get there. And as truly “human,” the saints are in a wonderful position to pray for us, so that we can become what they are. That’s what we are doing when we “pray to” the saints. We are not so much “praying to” them as “praying with” them, asking them to help us along in this world so that we might reach the eternal worship of God for which we were created.