All Saints Day (November 1)

In 835, Pope Gregory IV (r. 827–844) set November 1 as a day to honor all the saints (at a time where most people acknowledged as saints were martyrs).
Among the more magnificent architectural wonders in Rome at the time was the former Pantheon, which had been transformed into a church honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyr saints. At the time of the consecration by Pope Boniface IV (r. 608– 614) on May 13 (in either 610 or 611), All Saints Day was placed on the church’s calendar on a day that had been a popular holiday in Pagan Rome, May 13 being the culmination of the ancient feast of Lemuria in which Romans would ritually seek to drive the malevolent spirits of the dead from their homes and lives.

It was also evident to any student of the church’s history that most of the martyrs remained nameless, even as the church had risen to a place of prominence and leadership on their blood. What is not evident is, as he consecrated a chapel in the Basilica of Saint Peter to all the saints, how much Gregory was aware of the fact that some in the Pagan lands to the north saw November 1—and more so, the evening that introduced it—as a time of the dead and communication with them.

As the veneration of saints and the theological speculation on purgatory as a place of intermediate suffering of the deceased who are not yet purified and sanctified to a point that they can reach heaven rose, All Saints Day took on an increasing importance as a memorial to all the saintly persons who had not found a place on the church’s calendar. The church came to believe that the saints represented a storehouse of grace that became available to the average believer as the church opened it to them, and that such grace could be used to free suffering souls from purgatory. (It was the observation that the church’s use of this belief in purgatory for the selling of indulgences to free the deceased from suffering had been corrupted that became the initial issue leading to the Protestant Reformation.)

For Catholics, All Saints Day is a day of obligation, meaning that the faithful should attend a Mass and refrain from activities that distract from the atmosphere of worship. After the Reformation, Anglicans and Lutherans continued to observe All Saints Day, but it was discarded by the churches in the Reformed church tradition such as the Presbyterians. It has regained some prominence in the atmosphere of the 20th-century ecumenical movements, but is often shifted to the Sunday nearest to November 1. It competes with Halloween, a secularized holiday that emerged at the end of the century as one of the most celebrated in the United States, from where its popularity has been exported to many parts of the world.

References 
Cunningham, Lawrence S. The Meaning of Saints. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980. Hawley, John Stratton, ed. Saints and Virtues. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Woodward, Kenneth. Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

All Saints Day (November 1) 2019-11-06T00:30:00-08:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: mc