"Land, blood and the deceased"

This is how the Bishop of Porto described the people of the north, and the Portuguese people, in general, to missionaries during a conference. Such a profound knowledge of the idiosyncrasy of the Portuguese people does not seem to have been well translated by the bishops themselves when they preferred to keep the Assumption of Our Lady as a national holiday to the detriment of All Saints' Day.

Saying this does not make me suspect of being one of those clerics who think that expressing love and gratitude to our heavenly Mother makes us less Christ-centered. I pray the Rosary every day and always at the end of Mass I invite the people to say one Hail Mary, to thank her through whom the bread from heaven and the incarnate word of God, Christ, came to us.

I have lived in and visited many countries in the Catholic world, and in nowhere have I seen a cult of the deceased like that of the Portuguese, both in Portugal and abroad, in communities scattered all over the world. Our people are so generous that, after having a Mass celebrated for their loved ones, they always add another Mass for the most abandoned souls in Purgatory - those who have no one to remember them by. In abolishing this holiday, is the Church not shooting herself in the foot?

The faithful departed and All Saints, that the holiday brought together, for the convenience of the people, are an expression of the Communion of Saints expressed in the Apostles' Creed. In my village of Loriga, and in many parts of Portugal, people express this same Communion of Saints in the community procession to the cemetery, to visit the remains of their loved ones.

The feast of All Saints is our feast... the only one in the liturgical calendar that does justice to and celebrated the efforts, not of the beatified nor the canonized, but of so many Christians who, in their daily lives, seek to become more like Christ by responding to the call to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

In the civil world, in matters of general interest, governments consult the people in a referendum -- "Voice of the people, voice of God". This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council: a council that made the Church less pyramidical and more circular; less hierarchical and more of communion; less ecclesiastical and more accessible and available. Could not the people have been consulted on this matter in some way? After all, the feast of all the saints of God was our equivalent to the tomb of the unknown soldier that all countries have and proudly maintain.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC