Advent Prep
"And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done" (Revelation 20:12). The Church is squarely into the first week of Advent. Advent and Lent are the two seasons of penance in each liturgical year, both of which provide useful opportunities to ponder the four last things: death, judgement, Heaven, Hell. Since Lent precedes the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord, Lent seems to lend itself to meditating upon the eventuality of our own deaths, that certainty we cannot escape; upon the indescribable joy of Heaven, to which we've been made co-heirs and to which Christ precedes us; and the reality of Hell, from which Christ's humiliation and death has freed us. Advent, though, as it leads us into the celebration of Christmas, seems to be a time to mediate almost exclusively upon...