The month of November begins with the Feast of All Saints and is immediately followed by All Souls Day. This time of year the trees are stripped bare and the gardens (or what is left of them) turn brown. At the same time the daylight notably shortens as we hasten toward the winter solstice. By the end of the month, we might even have the first snowfall (welcomed by deer hunters, if not by shovelers!).

All of this serves as an annual reminder of the passage from earthly life to death and its preparation for eternal life to come. Rather than being somehow frightened or put off by that thought, as followers of Jesus it feeds into our hope for what is to come, because beyond the cold and darkness of the coming winter we are confident of the arrival of spring. Just so, we are confident that Christ will fulfill his promise. He will come again in glory, and we are awaiting him even now.

Such confidence is a hallmark of our Christian faith. But so are some particular aspects of our spiritual lives. For example, we not only believe in life after death, but also that while still of this world we are not without access to the deceased whom we have loved. We can pray for their eternal happiness and for the purification of the souls of our loved ones in purgatory. The grace of final union with God comes from and through Christ and his death on the cross, but what a joy and a responsibility to know that God the Father allows our prayers to be joined to the sacrifice of His son. We can also pray to our beloved dead and ask for their prayers and assistance for our needs.

But there is a further consolation from our faith in this communion of saints that extends to our beloved dead.

We can still, in a proper sense, speak to those whom we have loved in our prayers even apart from asking for help. What a consolation for a widow to be able to pray to her deceased husband and say once more that she is grateful for the life of fidelity and to remind him that she loves him.

Such “conversations” that can be shared between parents and children and friends and business partners are not games of the imagination. They are, rather, real statements of faith that ultimately point to our conviction that what Jesus promised us is true and that he will deliver.

This vision of passing from life to death to eternal life, even as we find it in nature, is a constant reminder to us that every moment of every day points to that reality in our lives. None of us ever gets any younger.

There is no decision we make or action that we carry out that will not have its impact, for good or for ill, in preparing for our meeting with Jesus. And every one of us is, in a very real sense, on the clock, drawing ever closer to that day.

St. Augustine had a very touching thought about this process. In one of his homilies in the 5th century, he said, “We say that we love Jesus, and yet we fear to meet him. Are we sure that we love him?”

As we reflect this month on  the message of nature and of our deceased friends and family members, don’t forget to speak to Christ as well. Tell him that you really are looking forward to the day of that face to face meeting and that you are doing everything you can to prepare for it.