Crazy Catholics!

Happy All Saints Day!  Shall I make a cake, or should I wait until tomorrow when it is All Souls Day?  Who says Catholics don't like to party?!

All Saints Day is a Catholic day dedicated to all the Saints, who at the time of their death, were so squeaky clean, they automatically entered heaven.  We, as Catholics, pray for them on this day as a way of say, "Way to go!  Good job! Lucky bastards!"

All Souls Day, celebrated on November 2nd of every year in the Catholic church, is dedicated to all the faithful departed who still have a little soil on their souls - maybe a few venial sins ("a partial loss of grace from God"; a "forgiveable" sin) that need to be cleansed in Purgatory before heading up to heaven.  For example, my callling the Saints "lucky bastards" could conceivably be considered a venial sin.  It was a little mis-step from Grace and I will ask for forgiveness as soon as I stop giggling over the fact that I called the Saints lucky bastards. 

Of course, the faithful departed may also have dirtier, heartier sins on their souls, called mortal sins [ (1) Its subject must be a grave (or serious) matter; 2) It must be committed with full knowledge, both of the sin and of the gravity of the offense (no one is considered ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are inborn as part of human knowledge, but these principles can be misunderstood in a particular context); 3) It must be committed with deliberate and complete consent, enough for it to have been a personal decision to commit the sin.  (For example, breaking of one or more of the Ten Commandments)].  If they are not cleansed of these sins, according to the Catholic religion, they are condemned to hell for all of eternity.  And so, we pray for them every day, but especially on All Souls Day.

I know, I know... those Catholics are crazy!  I can envision some of my readers shaking their heads at the content of this blog, saying, "Why'd she have to go there with all her crazy Catholic rituals?  This All Souls and All Saints Day stuff is a bunch of hoopla."

Maybe.
Maybe not.

I think it's kind of cool that the Catholic religion is so meaty, and so clear cut on its standards.  There are some harsh circumstances to sinning, no?  And it doesn't hurt to know what the standards of the most popular religion in the Western hemisphere has to say about stuff.  If nothing else, regardless of whether you believe it, you learned something new today.

What I know as I go through this day and all day tomorrow is that I'll be grateful.  I'll be grateful that Mother Theresa, St. Anthony, St. Michael, St. Francis and all the other Saints who achieved sainthood through the simple act of loving, gave me a bit of a higher standard to live by; and using their achievements, I will pray for the faithful departed that, if Purgatory exists, they're being cleansed so that after my stint in the purgatory slammer, I'll be able to see them in heaven after I die.

There's nothing wrong with praying.  So, the hoopla, as it has been described, might be just a crazy Catholic thing, but what the heck, I'm still praying for something, my focus is on something other than the bullshit, pain and hurt of life on earth. So why not?

And that's all I got to say about that.