EDITORIAL - Getting it wrong the right way

Today is All Souls’ Day. But the vast majority of Filipinos already visited the graves of their dear departed yesterday, All Saints’ Day. It is not clear if the switch was intended, perhaps because nobody ever really tried to find out.

But most everybody alive today would probably agree that it has been this way as far as they can remember. You go to the cemeteries on November 1, All Saints’ Day, to remember the dead. If you can't make it on that day, there is still November 2, the actual day to do such remembering.

So what happens to the saints who are supposed to be remembered on All Saints’ Day instead of the dead? There are Masses actually held on that day for the purpose. But those who go to these Masses are mostly people who really go to Masses, regardless of the occasion.

Very few go to church on November 1 specifically to hear Mass because it is All Saints’ Day. They go to church because they find meaning in doing so and not because it is the day for this or for that. It is because of these people that Masses themselves find meaning. Both feed on each other's deeper purpose.

            As to the practice of remembering the dead, it is actually not necessary for an entire nation to do so with its crunching presence in cemeteries. That there is an All Souls’ Day is only to make sure that the dead are remembered, at the very least once a year.

But there is actually no limit to how many times a person may visit the resting place of a beloved departed. A person may do so every day if he has the time and the means, as well as the resolve. Or he can do it at a less driven pace and a more manageable schedule.

If he is so inclined to do that, it might not even be necessary for him to go to the cemetery either on November 1, All Saints’ Day, or the day after, November 2, All Souls’ Day. Remember, it does not say anywhere that remembering has to be only on these two dates, or one, All Souls’ Day, if one has to be strict about it.

All Souls’ Day, again, was set aside to make sure remembering happens at least once in a year. But it is not the do-all and be-all of remembering. Nevertheless, Filipinos do not mind the mistake, especially so if they do not even know it is one. If it feels good, then getting it wrong the right way don't matter a wee bit.