*spooky boop*

Halloween, costumes, and holy poverty

I never particularly enjoyed Halloween. Mainly I’ve just been too self-conscious to want to draw attention to myself via a costume I was wearing and I constantly live in a state of fight-or-flight, so please don’t scare me. In fact, the last time I went through a haunted house, I quite literally sprinted all the way through it, making the actors very confused as they tried to figure out how to scare the screaming girl that was zig zagging toward the light at the end.

Enter: Rocco. He is the perfect canvas to dress up.

The first costume I ever put Rocco in was for Easter last year. That’s when I learned that he does not like it when his ears are squished.

Then my next great idea was to find a space-related costume for Rocco to go along with a writing project. For some reason, a spacesuit/astronaut costume for dogs does not exist! So I found this rocket ship costume on sale and thought we would try it. Soviet-era cosmonaut was not the vibe we were going for, but that’s what we got.

Ok, so the costumes weren’t working so far. Maybe just a hat? Just a nice little cowboy hat? Rocco’s opinion is all in his expression.

For the most part, I had decided to give up on costumes until I started seeing ads and two caught my eye. The first was really more of a sweater, so I’m saying that we’re going to also use it to stay warm in the winter.

I think we’re going to need a bigger bone.

And lastly, we have my favorite: Pope Rocco. I’m looking forward to putting him in this one for Religious Ed classes this week. Does that make it a business-related expense for tax purposes?

There’s a tiktok that’s circulating that has a voiceover saying, “Tell me you have a human without telling me you have a human…” followed mostly by shots of dogs in clothes. They’re funny and they basically describe Rocco’s life.

There’s something that bothers me about buying clothes for Rocco, though. As a Christian, I believe wholeheartedly that God asks us to be stewards of everything that has been entrusted to us. This means with our money to use only what we need, to keep a modest savings, and to give the rest to the poor.

In a very real way, dressing up Rocco seems to be an extravagance, seems to be one of those ways that Pope Francis tells us we are stealing from the poor.

Holy poverty is a virtue. This doesn’t mean that we sit starving in smelly rags and sleep under a bridge. No, this means that fundamentally we know that what we have does not ultimately belong to us.

This is a tricky thing and has been a real challenge for me, especially since leaving the convent. I went from having zero dollars to having slightly more than zero dollars. But the fundamental lesson of poverty remains: whether we have zero dollars or more than zero dollars, none of it really belongs to us.

Understandably this can be a complicated subject. I’m not going to go into the nuances of communism and socialism and capitalism, mostly because I don’t really understand them myself. But what I do understand is this: money is necessary for living in the world, but money alone will never make us happy. Only God can do that.

I’m not going to try to justify the number of clothes that I have for Rocco. I know they’re unnecessary, but I also know they make me (and others) smile and can be a great point of conversation when we see neighbors on walks (yes, I take the pope for walks).

Holy poverty is not cut and dry. Jesus is the main example of this, as St. Paul says that He gave up everything for our sake, holding onto nothing for Himself. So the question we can ask ourselves is not whether or not we have too much “stuff,” but whether or not we are holding onto anything other than God.

In other words: what am I most afraid of losing? That reveals our deepest desires.

And to close out: remember that temperance is also a virtue. Happy Halloween!