As Posted to Medium on November 10, 2021

In the Catholic Church, November is a time to remember the dead. Since it starts with All Saints and All Souls days and is the last month of the Church year, it is fitting that it is a time of rememberance. In fact, remembering those we have lost is one of the ways that we prepare ourselves for the anticipation of Advent — the time of getting ready to celebrate Christ’s birth. This may seem counter intuitive. How can thinking about death help us to be ready to celebrate birth? That, however, is precisely what it does.

My grandfather died last week. Being no stranger to death, I immediately thought, “I hate death.” I do. I just hate every part of it. I hate the separation. I hate the sadness. I hate the longing that cannot be satisfied. I hate the thousand questions that suddenly arise with no one to answer them. I hate the regrets. I hate the end. So does God.

He didn’t make us to die. He didn’t make us to sorrow. He didn’t make us to long without satisfaction. He didn’t make us to have regrets. He certainly didn’t make us to be separated from Him or one another. And He absolutely didn’t make us to just end. But, then sin entered the scene and we walked right into its trap and away from all of the things God did make us for — perfect love, unending joy, contentment, union, eternity. The cost of that sin is death.

Yet God hates death so much. He hates it more than you or I ever could. He hates it so much, that He sent His Son to undo what we have done and to destroy death itself. In fact, at Christmas, 2000 years ago, He sent a baby to be born in an everyday world, to an everyday family, for everyday people like us. That little, tiny baby grew and did what He came to do. He destroyed death and took away the sin that had separated us from everything God made us for. He gave us back eternity.

That is why feeling the weight of death’s toll is the perfect way to prepare to celebrate Christ’s birth — He is the undoer of death and the remaker of everything we were meant to be and to have. Death reminds us that we are not living in the world that we were created for. We are strangers, passing through on our way to eternity. Death feels so wrong because it is wrong. We feel helpless before it because we desperately need saving from it. But the One who will make it all right again has already come.

This month, we remember those who have died that we love, but we do not grieve like people without hope. Instead, we know that our grief feels so wrong because it is wrong, but it will be made right again. Next month, we will celebrate the birth of the One who has and who will make it right. That doesn’t mean that all of our grief will be covered up with celebration. No, instead our celebration will be deeper, truer because we celebrate with the full knowledge of how valuable the gift of the One who was born is. We know the worth of the gift because we have lost — just for a while — what He will restore.