Author: Jim Naughton

All Hallows—or All Saints as we know it now is something of a confusion in these latter days. Who we remember, what we remember, and why has been blurred: sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. All Saints, All Souls, and the difference between them lie at the intersection of the Church’s musings on Scripture, on the Church Expectant, the Church Triumphant, and the overarching principle of the baptized dead knit into the living Christ.

For many decades, few mainstream horror films failed to follow the old-testament formula. They enumerated reasons why victims deserved to die—promiscuity, drunkenness, whatever—showed us their deaths, and provided us with a hero free of sin who conquered the evil and lived on. (Not coincidentally, the villains typically have the ability to bend reality and are more or less immortal.)

Vocation is ultimately less about “what shall I do with my life” than it is about “how shall I respond to the relationship with God that I’m already in, perhaps without knowing it? The stirrings and restlessness that come with that experience of call are really already responses to God’s grace, active in us and in our world and relationships.