Make Visible What Is Invisible: All Saints
When there is a set of three holy days in a row, the old church referred to them as a triduum. Triduum is Latin for “three days.” We only have one such set of three days left in our Protestant calendar, the triduum that happens at Easter, with Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. There used to be more triduums that were observed in the church, including one that is happening now. What we now celebrate as Halloween on October 31 and All Saints’ Day on the first Sunday in November used to be a triduum called Allhallowtide. “Hallow” is from an Old English word for saint. The first day, All Hallow’s Eve, was a day of preparation, and has since been shortened to Halloween, using the Scottish word “e’en,” which means “eve,” or, the day before. The second day was All Hallow’s Day, a day to remember the saints and martyrs of the church. The third day was All Souls’ Day, a day to remember all who have died. This holy triduum worked all right back in the Middle Ages, when it started. However, then the Catholic Church started filling the calendar with saint’s days, that allhallowtide became less important as saints were getting remembered year round. Then when Protestantism started, along with the belief that all of God’s people are saints, we combined All Hallows and All Souls to All Saints, which means we remember all of God’s people who have gone before. Rather than keeping it to a strict date of November 1, we moved it to the first Sunday in November.
The Mexican tradition of Allhallowtide is called Dia de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. There, on October 31st, you make your altars with pictures of your relatives who have passed. On November 1st, it’s believed that the adult spirits come back to visit, and this is what’s shown in 2017’s best animated movie, “Coco.” Miguel wants to play guitar so badly that he steals a guitar from a mausoleum and suddenly he can see all the visiting spirits, which usually mortals can’t see. Finally, on November 2nd, you go to the cemeteries and decorate the graves of your relatives. There was another animated movie, also loosely based on Day of the Dead, that came out in 2014, called “The Book of Life.” One of the main characters is voiced by the Mexican actor, Diego Luna. Diego Luna lost his mother when he was only two years old, but he says that celebrating the Day of the Dead every year saved him from many years of therapy. The holiday let him focus on remembering his mother rather than agonize over his loss. The Day of the Dead is a formal version of what many of us do around the birthday or death day of a loved one who has passed. We cook their favorite food. We watch their favorite movies. We tell stories about them. It is good for us to talk about and remember those who have gone before us. It helps us deal with our grief. It’s a healthy way to grieve.
What these traditions and rituals do is make the visible the invisible. They give sights and sounds and smells to our love and our memories of our loved ones who are no longer physically present with us. They give a space in which to honor our grief and our memories and our love for those who have gone before us. Finally, they also make visible the invisible great cloud of witnesses of the church throughout space and time, remembering that God’s family is much larger than those we can simply see around us.