I was halfway through a slice of pie and a cup of coffee this morning when the calendar began to take hold. Well, I knew it was Friday, but I did not think of it as FRIDAY; as in the beginning of a Little Triduum, intentionally organized around a penitential period meant to create a hunger for the culminating Sunday Feast of Our Lord’s Resurrection. Kind of fitting, in a none-too-personally-impressive sort of way, given that this Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent.

So, if at first you don’t succeed and all that, let us consider the upcoming readings in the Light of The Grave:

This Sunday's Gospel is Matthew 24: 37-44 (from the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible)

As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man.

Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and not let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

I call these weekly reflections “coffin breaks” not only as a play on words, but that they might be a prompt to dam the downpour of disordered desires that drown our attention as days stream into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, until we are harshly confronted with the fact that this life is not the life we were created for. How perfect then, from a spiritual standpoint, that Black Friday precedes the First Sunday of Advent – the losing world makes a final all-out assault on our attention as our victorious Lord commences his eternal return.

“Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day.”

Blessed advent of Advent, everybody!