Halloween - The Time to Celebrate the Saints - Light, Not the Devil and Darkness

Many good Catholic families now gather on All Saints Day or its eve with children dressed in costumes of their favorite saints. I’ve seen this done for years now with good Catholic families and find it most enjoyable as do the children who are then educated into the lives, the Christian virtues of the Saints who become their heroes.

Rather than go on “tricks or treats” journeys through the neighborhood, good Catholic families with growing children gather at one another’s homes with their small children, even teenagers, and come dressed in costumes known to describe some saint. The older children give clues from the lives of the Saint they are impersonating or imitating. At first historical facts from their Saint’s life are related as others attempt to state or guess who the Saint is. The facts become clearer and clearer as more and more is related from the life of a Saint. - More evidence is given - until someone, or sometimes many, suddenly shout the name of the Saint. For the very little children dressed as saints some adult will reador state the clues to help identify the particular Saint the child has chosen. The children, often weeks in advance, sometimesmonths before - are found reading about Saints. They are studying the lives of Saints trying to decide which Saints they should come in costoms to the Halloween gathering for others to discover. Older children can usually give their own clues. The clues attempt to educate in the Christian virtues and invite the intercessory prayers of the Saints.

After all the Saints have been identified, the young people have a party with the treats which the adults provide.

The children are then well prepared to observe ALL SAINTS DAY with the proper spirit.

It is all part of the gradual re-emerging Catholic culture among young families today. Did you know it is again becoming fashionable to have larger families??? Almost all the Catholic families I know through the Fatima Family Apostolate International believe in having children, large families. That is true of the Catholic families which have moved to Alabama to be near the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Monastery of Our Lady of the Angels - where I offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass each day. Interesting that it was the Child Jesus who asked Mother Angelica to build a Temple in His honor. It is a privilege for me to know so many good and large families through the Fatima Family Apostolate and the Shrine here which honors the Child Jesus.

The Fatima Family Apostolate - on this website - has available four volumes of SAINTS AND HEROES SPEAK. Pope John Paul II said we must return to instilling in children and youth knowledge of and devotion to the Saints. That is why I wrote the four volumes for young people.

Father Robert J. Fox
Director of FATIMA FAMILY APOSTOLATE INTERNATIONAL (FFAI).