Tonight is Halloween, a festival that began around 5 B.C. in a part of the world we know today as Ireland. It began as a pagan celebration. In the Christian era, this pagan celebration changed into “Hallowed Eve” – the night before the celebration of All Saints Day.

In the 21st century, Halloween has become a big celebration, with 64% of Americans expected to celebrate this year. And it has become a big business. Get this: over $5 billion will be spent this year in America on Halloween. Ten years ago it was only about $2 billion. Over 36 million trick-or-treaters will be out this year knocking on doors with bags wide open and “Trick or treat!” on their lips.

Five of them will be Towey kids. They really look forward to Halloween. It is a night of drama and suspense. Kids like the costumes. They like going out into the night dressed as someone or something and knocking on the doors of strangers and getting candy. They like to count the candy when they get home. And they like to eat it whenever Mary and I aren’t looking. It is all a lot of fun, and I have great memories of the different outfits the kids have worn over the years, and their delight in approaching houses draped in cob webs and bathed in eerie lights.

One memory stands alone as a Halloween unforgettable.

We were living in Tallahassee, Florida at the time, in your standard issue middle class neighborhood. We were going door to door like everyone else. We approached a house that had fake tombstones in the front yard and a sign pointing down the driveway they had covered with a canopy of creepy things, all leading to a woman dressed in a witch’s outfit, pointy hat and all, seated at a card table that was draped with a black sheet. Her face was ghoulish white and resting on the table in front of her was some kind of opaque covering like you’d normally find over a big cake or turkey. My sons were all young – the oldest was just shy of 8, and the others were 6 and 4. Playing in the background was your standard spooky music. I remember my six year old squeezing my hand tighter and tighter as we stood before the neighborhood witch and she commented on each of their costumes. The older son was showing his bravery – he wasn’t going to allow the slightest bit of fear – and the youngest was pretty oblivious and just wanted to know where the candy was; he didn’t see any, and neither did I.

As she put her hand on the knob of the covering, she asked my three sons assembled before her, two simple questions: “Would you all like a treat? Would you like to see what is under this?”

They eagerly said yes. With a slow, dramatic flourish she raised the covering. What did the kids discover beneath the covering? A live human head with a face painted with scars and streaks of blood! A man was positioned beneath the card table and his head came through a hole cut in the table and sheet. I think he screamed something like “Boo!” at the kids. He didn’t really need to say anything. They had already begun running as fast as they could down the street (and thank goodness the youngest was still in diapers).

Wasn’t that nice of that lovely neighborhood couple to go through all of that trouble on Halloween? I guess they ruled out tazing the children or putting a throw rug in front of the table for unsuspecting little ones to fall into a deep pit filled with frogs and slugs.

I am happy to report that we didn’t have to put the kids in therapy over that incident (yet) and the following year at Halloween, the couple was no longer living there. Their house had mysteriously burned to the ground. Just kidding. I don’t know what happened to them or where they went, and in fact, we went looking for the haunted house next year and actually were looking forward to seeing them (the boys had brought squirt guns).

And tonight, our kids are ready for another robust collection of memories and candy – I read that the amount of money spent in America on Halloween candy this year, per person, is $21.

Last night at prayer time we talked about costumes, and how putting on the costume of Spiderman doesn’t make you Spiderman (anymore than putting on a Yankees uniform made A-Rod a Yankee). Costuming Christmas as Santa Claus; costuming Easter as a bunny rabbit; and costuming children on the eve of All Saints Day is all fine, as long as the underlying, essential spiritual realities of these holy days are held sacred and observed. A consumer society that is materialistic by nature will want to grab anything and make a buck on it, including our holy days. I love how our elder brothers and sisters in faith, the Jews, have held tight to their religious traditions and avoided the commercialization of them.

Perhaps we would do well to understand why they protect their major religious observances from exploitation, and follow their example. And tonight, when Halloween ends, it would be good to spend tomorrow – All Saints Day – in prayerful recollection. For our Catholic students, it is a day where the Church obliges us to attend Mass because the Church, as mother, knows we need to commune with the saints and ponder their example and ask for their intercessory prayers. For our non-Catholic students, it is a day that can be used to think of things eternal.

St. Matthew, in Chapter 25, verses 31 to 46 of his Gospel, points to just that. It tells of Jesus’ account of the last judgment, and it has almost a “trick or treat” flavor to it for it speaks of that time when, as Bob Dylan wrote, we go “Knockin on Heaven’s Door.”

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels of heaven, he will sit upon his royal throne and all the nations will be assembled before him. Then he will separate them into two groups, as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.”

Which group will you be in? The one who fed the hungry, visited the sick, and gave to others, or the one where no one did?

Twenty-four of us from Saint Vincent spent this past weekend with a man who has spent his life ministering to the needs of the handicapped. His name is Jean Vanier and I have been blessed to call him a friend for 22 years. He began in 1964 by removing two men from a hellish institution for the disabled in France and moving into a home and creating a community - a family – with them. He named this place of refuge l’Arche (French for “The Ark”) and in the years that followed he and the many companions who have followed him have opened 131 houses in over 30 countries. We’ll have tapes of his talks on our college’s closed circuit television soon, but ask the students who went and they will tell you that they have never met anyone like him, and that they felt blessed to simply be with him, and to be themselves.

Jean spoke of how the disabled are “costumed” – that their outward bodies are covered with visible handicaps, but that beneath this cover they are fully human and loved by God in a special way. Jean invited our students to go beyond the outer appearances of someone who is blind, can not walk, can not speak, and may be profoundly mentally retarded, and see their value and beauty and importance in God’s eyes.

On a day when millions of children will be putting on costumes, it might be good for us to look at the ones we put on that keep us from being our true selves.

And we might benefit from looking beyond the “costumes” of those who are clothed in hunger and nakedness and illness who, like the beloved of Jean Vanier’s communities, may seem powerless and of little importance, but in the eyes of God and St. Matthew’s Gospel account, are in fact Jesus disguised.