Happy Feast of All Saints!

Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints!

Our plans for All Saints' Day:  

1) Since it's a Holy Day of Obligation, we won't have our typical Saturday work party and no end of the month Saturday shopping excursion, either.  (The children shout, "Huzzah!" but Dan, the chore director, sighs, ("Alas.  My beloved woodpile shrinketh...."  And I'm just trying to figure out exactly when I'm going to go grocery shopping, since tomorrow is Sunday...)  

2)  Right this minute enjoying a slow, leisurely morning, drinking coffee, nibbling on bacon and roasted pumpkin seeds while watching George of the Jungle.  (Maybe somebody will get around to making some eggs here soon...)

3)  Throughout the day, the children will do some last minute brushing up on their saints' costumes and presentations.  While Dan and I sit around, batting the breeze, trying not to guess who everyone is too soon  (those of us who don't already know...)

4) We're planning a late lunch of barbecued pork chops, sweet potato fluff, baked apples, 3 bean salad, followed by a "heavenly trifle" for dessert -- made with angel food cake, vanilla pudding, Cool Whip, lemon pie filling, and vanilla wafers

5) Saints' presentations after lunch -- wherein, all the (hopefully-still-somewhat-secret) identities of each child's saint will be guessed upon and revealed

6)  Mass at 6:30  6:00 (Thanks, Terrie C.!)

7) Then, queue up one of our saints' movies when we get home.  Not sure which one yet...  Song of Bernadette maybe, or St. John Bosco...  I guess we'll see

8) And to bed with thoughts of saints and heaven in our heads

*  Links to other posts here -- with some of our party ideas from other years, and our take on having the celebration today on the Feast Day, rather than yesterday on the Vigil Day.  And why you didn't see anything on my blog or FB page about Halloween.  ;)  Read it if you dare! (Just kidding, we do not consign Trick or Treaters to the halls of perdition, folks! We just choose to do something we think is better.)

Tomorrow, the Feast of All Souls:

We have special plans!  Since we live within a short walk of a little (150 year old) cemetery, we are going to see how it works to try a little Holy Souls devotion of our very own.   The children have been working on tin can lanterns during the week.  Tomorrow evening, as soon as the sun goes down, we'll light our little lanterns, don our coats and scarves, and walk down the lane to the cemetery, while praying the rosary for the Holy Souls.  When we get to the cemetery, when the rosary is finished, we'll pray the Penitential Psalms and/or the Dies Irae.

The hope is that we will be able to pray some souls into heaven tomorrow and all next week, when the Church gives us the privilege of earning plenary indulgences* for departed souls!  And, the Feast of All Souls is an appropriate time for us to remember our mortality -- and even thrill in a few chills!  (Because walking to a country cemetery in the dark with little tin lanterns praying for the dead is bound to beat the conventional plain old ordinary Halloween shenanigans for pure spookiness!  And it's spookiness with a purpose!)  

* Between Noon of November 1 and Midnight on All Souls Day, a person who has been to confession and Communion can gain a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, for the poor souls each time he visits a church or public oratory and recites the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory be to the Father six times. This is a special exception to the ordinary law of the Church according to which a plenary indulgence for the same work can be gained only once a day.