I have so many great memories of trick-or-treating in my neighborhood as a child, just like so many other generations. And a core part of those Halloween nights was, of course, the costumes. I had many costumes over the years, from a cowboy, to a Power Ranger, to a ninja, to the Phantom of the Opera. I was also blessed that my mother would lovingly make the costumes by hand with her sewing machine.
Like other kids, most of my costumes were picked based on the media I was consuming at the time. The characters I dressed as were often heroes, characters I looked up to for their fight against evil. Others were chosen because they were “cool” to me as a kid, not always being the most noble or upright figures (see the aforementioned Phantom).
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As I grew older and less frequently went trick-or-treating or donned new costumes each year, my connection to Halloween faded. However, reminiscing on the past got me thinking about what sort of costumes I might pick now as an adult if I were to make one. And given the connection between Halloween and All Saints’ Day, I started thinking: What saints I might pick to dress up as and why?
What if we turned to the saints with that same childlike wonder as we might have with heroes? We can look to the saints as great models of virtue, love, and wisdom and seek to be like them in our lives, to emulate them.
In many ways, we pick saints in this manner if we choose to take on a saint name at the time of our Confirmation or are given one at Baptism. My confirmation name is Saint Ferdinand. I chose him as he is the patron saint of engineers, which is what I had desired to do with my life when I was being confirmed. Another saint I look up to and desire to emulate is St. Philip Neri, a patron of comedians among other things. He had a great way of diffusing tension with joy and humor that warms my heart.
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Finally, St. Hildegard von Bingen’s curiosity is another saintly example in my life. She had a gifted scientific mind and would catalog all sorts of flora and fauna. All of this came from a curiosity to know what God had made in the world and to see God’s goodness in it.
So which saint or saints would you pick? Who do you wish to emulate in your life and “put on” in a certain way? Not only as a costume (though if you dress as a saint this Halloween, please send photos), but also in living up to an example we admire, an example that helps us to seek our own journeys of holiness.
In our lives with Christ, we are all called to holiness, to strive to be saints, and so we have their examples to help us. But we also do it in a way that is unique to each of us. So we have the saints as “costumes” to help us in emulating sainthood, but underneath is us, seeking to be a saint in our unique lives and our unique ways. And in striving to do this, we ourselves become examples to others, signs of love and holiness, just as my mother is a sign of love to me whenever she made a costume (and in so many other ways).
