Your attention please:

To the unfortunate person who arrived at this blog by googling "Patron saint of getting rid of rodents", I can't seem to find one for that particular purpose, but I'll wager that Saint Patrick might have a trick or two up his sleeve. Try him.
If that doesn't work, try those plug-in high frequency devices which annoy the rodents so badly they leave.
It worked for us when we had a mouse in Wyoming.
Or get a cat.
And good luck to you.

Obligatory Hallowe'en Post

There have been more posts this year regarding how Catholics should treat Hallowe'en than I have ever seen.
I'm not sure why this is; however, I will say that it's a good thing when people are serious enough about their faith to question the value of something they see as secular and bizarre.

I am a fan of Hallowe'en. It's not that I dress up (I'm too old for that) or go out or have a party. It's just that I love to see the kids all dressed up, I like an excuse to buy candy at the store "for the kids", knowing that a few of those miniature Butterfingers are mine, and I love autumn weather.

But one great reason to keep this Catholic tradition up (Hallowe'en was once banned by the Puritans as being "too Catholic", as were Christmas celebrations. Look it up.) is because Hallowe'en is the night where we outwardly mock the devil. We don't do that nearly enough these days.

As Saint Thomas More wrote, "The devil, the prowde spirite, cannot endure to be mocked."

Seeing a 3-year old chubby cheeked toddler with plastic red horns and a plastic red pitchfork and exclaiming, "Ohhhhh, how adorable you are!" must grieve Satan immensely. Think about it.

No one I know is drawing pentagrams on their floors or sacrificing chickens. I don't associate with people who actually, literally worship Satan, people to whom our silly Hallowe'en traditions are a source of discomfort and irritation.

When we laugh at death by dressing as a skeleton or a ghost, we are thumbing our noses at the Prince of Lies and affirming our belief in God and Eternal Life.
Plus, no matter what, the goofiness and "scariness" of October 31st will always, always yield to November 1st, when we revel in the glory of the Church Triumphant and reevaluate how closely we are following their example.
Someone once wrote, "You can't have Easter without Good Friday."
Well, I think Hallowe'en and All Saints' go together.
We goof around and joke about death, which our senses tell us is the "end", but what the illumination of Faith tells us is really the beginning, and then we celebrate that fact with a rare Holy Day of Obligation. We remember all "our" saints - our name saints, our confirmation saints, our patron saints. We go to Mass and tell them "thanks" for their constant intercession and aid. We swap amazing saint stories with our Catholic friends. ("Oh, yeah? Well I prayed to Saint Jude and suddenly that pit of crocodiles was a pit of marshmallows! I ate my way out!")
We know that on 11/2, we are going to pray for those people whose fate we know not, but on 11/1, it's time to rejoice and celebrate those whose fates we know.

My point is that the All Saints' triduum (including Hallowe'en) might just be the part of the year which most easily allows us to teach our little Catholic children about the afterlife, and how important it is to walk the straight and narrow path.

I am not suggesting that anyone MUST celebrate Hallowe'en, any more than I'd suggest you hate Christmas because you don't put up a tree.
I think you can certainly raise children who "get it" without using Hallowe'en as a teaching tool. But I also don't think you're a bad Catholic because you eat an Atomic Fire Ball while telling the kids a story about the man with the hooks for hands who still lurks in these woods on nights like toniiiARRRRRGHHHHHHHH!!!!

As far as the perceived "secular" aspects of Hallowe'en, all I can tell you is that I dressed up as all kinds of stuff as a child (mostly as a Scary Ghost - you know, the one made with a flowery bedsheet with two eyeholes cut out. Hey, I was the ninth child. To say that they were "over it" would be an understatement) and it never became the gateway to the underworld for me. I never felt a burning desire to bust out the Ouija Board® after I scored some free candy corn from our elderly neighbors. But I do probably owe a cavity or two to the day.

And cavities are no laughing matter, kids.

Yikes.

I've read "The Divine Comedy" in its entirety a couple of times, but I've read "Inferno" much more than that. I love this book.
And every time I read it, I'm struck by how powerful the imagery is.
Dante didn't just put the arch-heretics down there burning.
Notice that they burn "with all of their disciples." Everyone who ever followed a heretic suffers the same fate as the heretic himself.
Dante's Hell must be mighty spacious.


"At as Arles where the Rhone turns to stagnant waters
or as at Pola near Quarnero's Gulf
that closes Italy and bathes her confines,

the sepulchers make all the land uneven,
so they did here, strewn in all directions,
except the graves here served a crueler purpose:

for scattered everywhere among the tombs
were flames that kept them glowing far more hot
than any iron an artisan might use.

Each tomb had its lid loose, pushed to one side,
and from within came forth such fierce laments
that I was sure inside were tortured souls.

I asked, "Master, what kind of shades are these
lying down here, buried in the graves of stone,
speaking their presence in such dolorous sighs?"

And he replied, "There lie arch-heretics
of every sect, with all of their disciples;
more than you think are packed within these tombs.

Like heretics lie buried with their like
and the graves burn more, or less, accordingly."
Then turning to the right, we moved ahead

between the torments there and those high walls.

What you'll be missing...

If you don't get yourself to Chicago this Friday for All Souls' Day at St. John's*:

Video of the Mozart Requiem at St. John Cantius

If I've said it before, I've said it a thousand times: Mmmmmmm, black vestments.

*Or the marvelous St. Agnes in Minneapolis.