We had our Parade of Saints again at our church after more than two years since the 2020 lockdown! Praise and thanks be to God for making this possible!

In the past two years, we had to do our Parade of Saints in our parish virtually to still give the children in our parish the chance to dress up as Saints during Halloween and All Saints’ Day without sacrificing their safety. During this time, the number of participants went down compared to the in-person events that we used to hold annually during this time of year.

But, last Sunday, God blessed us with, surprisingly, a very good turnout! Almost 50 kids joined our parade last Sunday! This was really a good number. We didn’t expect that this many children would want to participate in our event this year. Our team was delighted to see that parents and children were eager to join our annual event again. This number of participants was comparable to our turnout before the pandemic.

The event was originally scheduled two Sundays ago on October 30. But because of Typhoon Paeng, we chose to postpone the event to last Sunday.

We thought that this could lessen the number of participants who will attend. But the opposite happened. More parents asked us to add their children to our list.

Our Many Blessings

This year’s Parade of Saints has been so blessed! I felt that God was really encouraging us to push through with it and to make it in the church again.

The Holy Bible says that we should be cunning like serpents and that we should be like the children in this world in trying to win souls for the Kingdom.

We tried to apply this in planning for our event.

We announced that we will give prizes in cash and in-kind again to the winners of Best in Costume. We also said that we will choose not just a pair of winners (male and female) but that we will have runners-up. Thus, for both males and females, we will give up to 3rd prize.

We also announced that there is no registration fee but we will give loot bags and snacks for free to all who will register. I knew that this was a big plus for our event because many Halloween celebrations and parties charge registration fees.

God provided for us donors for our cash prizes. He also provided for us donors for our loot bags and snacks. One of the friends of our Commission Head donated 60 pieces of bread. God also gave us donors for our freebies such that we got to include rosaries in our loot bags.

The author of The Saint Series (Books 1 – 3) donated 15 copies of her books to us. Five copies for every volume!

Then, one of our parishioners donated 30 copies of coloring books for children that teach the catechism of the Catholic Church! She also talked to their printer (she works in the publishing industry) and their printer donated 30 notepads!

Why 30 sets? Because, initially, we had a cutoff or limit of only 30 kids.

But our Parish Priest, eventually, decided to allow more kids to join our Parade of Saints.

We even found photographers who helped us cover the event.

We had volunteers who helped us on the day itself.

And we were blessed with good weather last Sunday!

All these blessings came one after the other!

It was tiring organizing and preparing for this event but it was all worth it!

Seeing the good turnout, the happy faces of the children all dressed in Saint costumes, the proud and happy faces of their parents and guardians, and knowing that God is pleased that we worked hard to make this event possible and available for the children in our parish made all the tiredness go away faster.

The kids did not only receive loot bags and snacks. The first 15 kids who registered received a volume of The Saint Series. The first 30 kids received coloring books and notepads. Most importantly, they all had the opportunity to dress up as Saints to celebrate Halloween and All Saints’ Day!

After the parade, the kids were given light snacks. Then, we all joined in the 5 PM Mass. After the Mass, Monsignor Melchor David prayed over the children and blessed them and their parents.

After which, the winners were announced and given their prizes and all the kids were given their loot bags and heavy snack/early dinner which was pancit.

The bonus is that we got to award prizes to 7 winners this year for best in Costume. It was challenging for our judges to choose only 6 winners. That’s why we chose 7. But, if I have a bigger budget, I would give prizes to more kids. So many of them really dressed very close to the depiction of the Saints that they have chosen.

Our Winners

It has been my heart’s desire for at least a decade now to provide Catholic kids, like my kids, with this kind of opportunity to celebrate Halloween and All Saints’ Day in a meaningful and fun way that is aligned with the catechism of the Catholic Church.

God answered my prayer more than a decade ago by enabling me to be part of the answer to my prayer. He led me to be a part of the Commission on the Family and be one of the Heads of the Ministry for the Children & Elderly. This gave me the opportunity to influence and work with other parish workers in making this event possible and institutionalized in our parish. Now, this event is a joint effort of the Commission on Youth and the Commission on Popular Religiosity, spearheaded by the Commission on the Family.

Looking back, I can’t help but be grateful to God because my children grew up joining these events yearly. My youngest was only almost 2 years old when we started doing this in our parish. My second child was only almost 5 and my eldest was 8 years old. This is the 7th year that we have done this in our parish. It was something that our family looks forward to every year. (You may read about our previous Parade of Saints here.)

This year, my eldest dressed as San Pedro Calungsod. Initially, he wanted to be a Franciscan Saint but we could not find their brown habit costume. So, he chose San Pedro Calungsod at the last minute. My second child was Blessed Carlo Acutis. My youngest was St. Corbinian again. Although during our Halloween celebration at home this year, he dressed up as St. Dominic de Guzman.

Prior to having this yearly event in our parish, we used to join our fellow Catholic homeschoolers and there was a year when we joined another parish that had this kind of event.

I’m so grateful to God that over the years, more and more parishes and Catholic communities are organizing similar events for Catholic kids. This is one answered prayer, indeed!

I believe that in our own little way, we were able to win and snatch more little souls from the enemy and for the Kingdom of God!

We give back the glory, praise, and thanks to God who chose us worthy to be part of this endeavor and who blessed the work of our hands!

I pray that next year, we would have more participants, not just children but also the youth.

Note: Photos included in this blog post of our little Saints during the parade were taken by Chris Cabe, including the group photo. You may see more photos of the parade on his Facebook page here and here.