A Most Unhappy Halloween

Halloween is particularly well placed in the calendar this year, shorn of its festive cloak due to what the Pontifex Maximus, for reasons unclear to me, referred to as "the lady" Covid.  Perhaps ladies are generally pestilent to the Catholic clergy--except, of course, for one Lady in particular.  Barely festive at all, in fact, for the children who benefit from the holiday in its largely secular form.

But what could be more appropriate at this very unfestive time?  Fear stalks the land in the form of someone as orange as a pumpkin, though not great in any good sense, along with the pandemic which seems to be growing.  Fear fostered by many for the most cynical reasons.  By politicians, that is to say, or at least those of them who are motivated primarily is not exclusively by the desire to retain power.  Fear also of uncertainty.  Fear of people wielding guns at polling places; fear of what might come of a Supreme Court whose latest member has minimal experience in law and seems to have been chosen for purely political reasons; fear of violence; fear of fraud in the election; fear that voting will be repressed.

Yes, Halloween will be scary this year if only due to the harrowing and hectoring political advertising to which we're exposed and the proximity to election day, which may or may not decide our fate, or which may or may not merely prolong the period in which we wait to know our fate depending on what options are available in the courts (I won't call them "legal" options for fear--what else?--of giving them more dignity than they merit).

Unfortunately, we can't take comfort in the wise, gentle and humorous traditions of this time of year, like the celebrations associated with the Day of the Dead.  There our deceased loved ones are thought of as still living and parts of our continuing families.  But imagine what our ancestors would feel if they could truly share our time with us.  They could only be angry of what we've become, or full of sorrow for us in our sorry state.  As for the saints of All Saints Day?  Well, perhaps they could at least intercede for us, assuming they would be heard.

Perhaps a mass exorcism is in order.  Priests brandishing the Rituale Romanum and reciting its text on exorcism should be walking among us, or perhaps driving among us in vehicles sporting loudspeakers, together with fundamentalist preachers casting out devils as some of them do on television.  Why not give it a try?  What do we have to lose?  Certainly not our dignity, which is long gone.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, in one of his travels, encounters the Houyhnhnms, a race of talking horses, wise, reasonable, and benevolent who rule over deformed, ignorant creatures resembling humans called Yahoos.  Though taken in, he's eventually banned by the Houyhnhnms for being too much like a Yahoo, or even a Yahoo himself.  He despises Yahoos, though, and when he returns to England can't stand living among his fellow humans.  He becomes a recluse, and spends his time in the stables talking to the horses.

He also more famously encounters the Lilliputians, a tiny people who are concerned with trivial matters and are obsessed with displays of authority and power.

I'm not certain whether we're more Yahoos or Lilliputians, now.  A combination of the two, perhaps.  If we could celebrate Halloween traditionally, we should dress up as both.  Or it may be no costumes would be required.

 

Ashes to Ashes

A Happy Ash Wednesday to all!

Well, it comes after carnival, so it seems appropriate that a post about Ash Wednesday would follow one about carnival.  It seems inappropriate, though, to wish anyone a Happy Ash Wednesday.  That would be to take the "Ash" out of Ash Wednesday, would it not?  No, not happy.

For several years--many, I suppose--I duly submitted my forehead to be smudged with ashes once a year, as did, and do, many others.  It seems I can't claim that this was or is a peculiarly Catholic tradition.  Certain Protestant churches "celebrate" Ash Wednesday as well.  The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church has no monopoly on the ritual of misery.

"Remember, man, thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return."  The Latin is: “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”  This is (or was?) the cheerful reminder dispensed along with ashes by priests on this insistently mournful day.  From Genesis 3:19.  We're reminded we're mortal.  So, supposedly, were those in ancient Rome granted a triumph--memento mori they were told as they rode their chariot along the Sacred Way; remember you are mortal.  It's a reminder that seemingly was ignored then, as it no doubt is ignored now, to the extent possible.  Who wants to be reminded of their upcoming death?

Nobody, I would think.  But it is apparently the function if not the delight of certain religions and certain of the religious to remind us of it nonetheless.  One could say that this reminder is made only in the course of reminding us as well that our salvation, and eternal life, is nonetheless guaranteed to us by the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, if only we believe in him.  And so we celebrate Easter.  If we don't believe in him, though, then we'll be among the dust burning in hell, if dust does indeed burn.  Or so some would say, in any event.  Thus, one could also say that the reminder serves as a warning of the horrible fate which awaits us when we die, unless...we repent, and change our evil ways, and believe.  Then, death will have no sting.  It will come, yes, but only as to the body.

It strikes me as strange, given the body-soul distinction made in Christianity, that relics of saints came to be given such importance, and were ascribed miraculous powers.  Some saint or martyr's bone is revered, and causes the blind to see and the lame to walk.  But why, if the soul has left the body?  Was the saint in question so very holy that holiness seeped into his/her body?

I think the Day of the Dead celebrated in Mexico is far less dreadful (literally) than such "reminders" of death as Ash Wednesday.  Unsurprisingly, this event derives from a custom in place before the arrival of the Spanish.  The dead are remembered and cherished.  Those who participate are reminded of death, certainly, but also of life as lived.  Those gone live again, or at least are treated as living; remembered as they were, and invited to participate in a family feast or celebration.

Even more significant is the fact that those living continue to live, and live with the dead and the knowledge of death.  Death is a part of living, and so loses its sting in a far more real sense than it does when its sting is thought to dissipate from the promise of some existence after death, one that can only be imagined.  The wise among the ancients, like the Stoics, thought death had no sting as well, and didn't fear it. 

Fear of it is inspired when it's viewed not merely as an end, but also a beginning--of suffering.  Death is a threat of sorts, now; the threat of hell and punishment if you don't do what you should do, think what you should think, in the craven system of morality that's been fostered here and elsewhere by those who think right and wrong are determined by divine command.  If they are, though, there is no right or wrong, really.  There is just the command.

"Our life is what our thoughts make it."  So says Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus.  So is our death.