Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Halloween! What a wonderful day to begin St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, a letter full of joy, tenderness, generosity, thanksgiving and solicitude for the betterment of all. And Halloween, the night when laughing children dress up in costumes and play trick-o’-treat in preparation to share the sweet things they have gathered. It is a 3000-year-old festival the Church has baptized, making it the prelude to tomorrow’s feast, the wedding reception prepared for Christ, the Messiah, to which we all are invited.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us what is essential for taking our place at that event. One must become like a child, not putting on a mask of false humility or a costume of compliance but following the example our Savior has left us.
He, the Son of God, put on the mask of man, the costume of the Suffering Servant. This way, having the nature of God and man, he entered into his glory and saved the world. To wish to be a collaborator in his work means to follow the same road that he followed in playing the same kind of trick-o’-treat in preparation for the glorious sharing of the treasures we have collected in our adventures.