"The best way to counter the Halloween juggernaut is..."

... to take the two great Feasts associated with it with proper seriousness: All Saints and All Souls. I am not sure why the old phrase "the Church Suffering", to denote those holy souls still in Purgatory, has been changed to "the Church Expectant"; perhaps because the word 'Suffering' sounds too harsh and gets confused with the permanent suffering of Hell. But "Expectant" leaves out the idea of "suffering" altogether – when the testimony of the saints has always been that the suffering of Purgatory is greater than anything we can experience on earth. That is a scary thought, though not as scary as knowing that the Evil One still wanders the world for the ruin of souls.

Food for thought from Francis Phillips in today's edition of The Catholic Herald. Here are some further thoughts on purgatory, from Fr. Anthony Zimmerman:

Purgatory is the service shop where repair work is done, and where books are balanced. The Poor Souls must wait for entrance into heaven, but they sense God's assistance while they make their final preparation. They already know what he will say finally: "Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joys of the Lord." They understand and accept God's kindness as well as his concern that justice be done. ...

We do not know how long some souls are detained in purgatory, but we do know that when they emerge from the darkness into the light of God's presence, they are perfect. Every angle is perfect. Every facet is clear, like cut and mounted diamonds. The dazzling beam of God's light renders them incandescent without causing pain, resistance, or distortion. His light now lights up the thousand angles of their rich characters developed via life's experiences. The wealth of their talents reflects his light into brilliant rainbow colors. The saints are all lovely in their beauty. Swept up by the Spirit, they flow with elation in the stream of God's love for himself. Like Moses, they jubilate in the endless wealth of the I AM, of God's boundless love, truth, and beauty, of essential Splendor pulsing with Life:

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abound ing in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation (Gen. 34:6-7).

The blessed participate not only in God's affirmation of himself, they also affirm themselves and their company with his approval. They luxuriate in their friendship with Christ first of all:

The blessed see in God, in the Word, also the holy humanity which the Son assumed for our salvation. They contemplate the hypostatic union, the plenitude of grace, of glory, and of charity in the holy soul of Jesus. They see the infinite value of His theandric acts, of the mystery of the Redemption. They see the radiations of that Redeemer: the infinite value of each Mass, the supernatural vitality of the mystical body, of the Church, triumphant, suffering, and militant. They see with admiration what belongs to Christ, as priest for all eternity, as judge of the living and the dead, as universal king of all creatures, as father of the poor (Garrigou-Lagrange, in Life Everlasting, Tan Books, 1991, pp. 228-9).

They salute also the Mother of God who meets them as Queen and as Mother, managing to be both at once. With the other beatified they join the celebration of joy, a fortissimo of what Beethoven strove to express it in his Ninth Symphony.

Read his entire essay on Ignatius Insight: