The Odd Three Days

If the period from Maundy Thursday through Good Friday to Holy Saturday ending with the Great Vigil of Easter (i.e. Easter Eve) can be called "The Great Three Days," then maybe the series of observances from All Hallows Eve (Halloween), October 31, All Saints Day (today, November 1), and All Soul's Day (or All Faithful Departed, November 2nd), might be called "The Odd Three Days."

Look at the arc of the story. It starts with ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go ‘bump’ on your door asking for candy. Next come two feasts focused on the dead: All Saint's, remembering all those holy people who don't get their own holy day; and, All Soul's or All Faithful Departed, where (depending on where you land on the universalist spectrum) we remember all the faithful (baptized or not) who have died, even if they weren't all that saintly, or everyone who has died regardless of their fitness for the Kingdom.

At any rate, what we are doing is recalling those who have died while at the same time thumbing our noses at death itself.

There was a time when April Foole's Day, was not just a day for cheap pranks, but was a day for anyone to make fun of Kings, Queens, Bishops and other clergy, the wealthy and the famous, and anyone who think themselves important.

Yesterday, on Halloween, we made fun of devils, demons, ghosts, goblins, and monsters. We looked death in the face and laughed.

Halloween stores, horror movies, and parties aside, secular society does this very nervously. That's because most people don't get the joke.

The reason that we followers of Jesus can put on make-up and join the mockery is that by reason of Jesus' incarnation, death, and resurrection God has defeated and put to flight the ultimate power that sin, death, and the grave have over us. Our bodies may die, but the spiritual power of death no longer has any hold over us. And even physical death is punctuated by resurrection, starting with Christ’s own rise from the grave, and Christians live in the confident hope of joining him in our resurrected life starting with our baptisms.

We might be tempted to think that when are praying for our deceased loved ones that we are pleading that God might give them a break from the torments of purgatory or hell or get them into heaven faster. This kind of fear, combined with clever fund-raising, is one of the things that sparked the Reformation 505 years ago.

Instead, what we are doing is joining with every single one of those everyday saints and souls from all time and every place who, as we heard in today's reading from Revelation, have gathered around the throne of the Lamb. Together we all sing "Alleluia!"

During this Lesser Triduum, these Three Odd Days, we look at the expanse of the church year now winding down, gear ourselves up for how God will wrap up history and fill all things, reflect on the coming of winter, and remember all the ways that God has shown up in the lives of ordinary people--especially in the ones we love but see no longer-- and we discover once again that God in Christ has swallowed up death forever.

The saints and souls we pray for, those near and dear to us, and those known to us only in name and story, are--just like us-- going from strength to strength in the life of perfect service.

These "three odd days," this lesser triduum, may seem like we are whistling past the graveyard, but why settle for whistling when we can sing?

We are able to sing as the Apostle Paul did when he wrote to the Corinthians; "Where, O death, is your sting...? ...Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"

We are, in fact, living in a new creation where the power of death, the power to separate us from God, each other, and creation, has been defeated forever in Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

So enjoy this Lesser Triduum… these days of festivity, frivolity, solemnity, and prayer… these odd and wonderful Three Days celebrating Christ’s victory over death—and ours!