There’s something beautiful in the fact that the calendar year and the Church year both begin during the winter. Old New Year’s Day (March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation) was no bad time to relaunch. The Incarnation was, after all, humanity’s official new start date, when Adam II entered the world to repair the damage done by Adam I, “mak[ing] all things new.” Celebrating the passage of one year by looking back to our Christian roots is no bad way to go. The eternally contrarian Church, however, saw fit to begin her calendar year neither with the conception of Christ nor with his birth, but at what is arguably the bleakest time of all the year: late November, when most of us are cold, sick, and uncomfortably overstuffed from Thanksgiving.

There’s little to recommend this month. November is ugly, rainy, windy, chilly, short on snow, short on leaves, short on color of every kind. Black Friday falls in November. November is the month of All Souls. You can’t get a much more down-in-the-mouth month than that.

November feels like the end of the year—and in the Church calendar, it is. We might expect the first gospel of the new Church year to liven the mood a bit. Christ is on his way, no? People are looking east, and the time is near! But the first gospel of this Advent is surprisingly stern.

And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark, and they knew not till the flood came, and took them all away; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be. Then two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Watch ye therefore, because ye know not what hour your Lord will come. But know this ye, that if the goodman of the house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch, and would not suffer his house to be broken open. Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know not the Son of man will come.

What, no press release? No emails? No Facebook invite? The King of Kings will not be opening a twitter account to track His reconquista of the universe?

Of course, I jest. We are all a little inclined to feel that the situation is unfair. If we knew when the boss was finishing lunch, we’d be working hard when he came back. We tend to shrug off the fact that we might not have put in much effort before his scheduled return. This is why good parents, employers, and superheroes don’t tell their people exactly when they’re going to be around. They’re not trying to catch anyone napping—on the contrary, they are trying to promote a state of readiness that will (hopefully) make their followers into leaders like themselves. If we knew when we were going to die then we would probably all, like the Emperor Constantine, schedule a deathbed baptism and count on entering heaven with whistle-clean souls. If only! The rest of our life could look to itself. The problem with this attitude, of course, is that the rest of one’s life would look to itself—and not to its end—we would become earthbound creatures, without the instincts of heaven; and we would be lucky indeed if, reaching that comfortable cot in a hospital room, we still believed enough to go through with our scheduled reception of Sanctifying Grace. After fourscore years of living any which way, how many of us would be able to embrace God’s offer, and not reject the news of heaven as a superstition?

So although the first Christmas has come and gone, and the first coming of the Son of Man is now a matter of ancient recorded history, the date of the Second Coming and the dates of our personal exoduses are matters of speculation. With each advent the Church reminds us that we and the world grow older. We cannot forget Christ’s first coming; we are all too apt to procrastinate in our preparations for His second. Hence the New Year greets us, not with the first breath of spring, in a rebirth that is deceptively like eternity, but at a time when all things in nature point to the inevitability of our death.