24/11/25 Night thoughts in November

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Night thoughts in November 

Published: November 25, 2024 03:59 AM

An iconic nighttime view of Manhattan is seen in this file image. (Photo by SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

When does a day begin?

For most of the world’s people and history, it was probably at dawn when sunlight begins to brighten and warm the earth.

For those who live by the clock, which is now most of us, it is at midnight, as symbolized in the 00:00 of our digital clocks as they begin their run toward 23:59.

In the first of the two creation accounts in Genesis, God begins creation by setting up day and night.

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Gen. 1:3-5)

“There was evening and there was morning, the first day” — the day began with sunset, not dawn. That is still the timing of Jewish feasts; they begin with sunset.

The Catholic Church follows Jewish custom to some extent. For example, Sunday and major feasts start the evening before. That is the reason Catholics can celebrate Sunday Mass on Saturday evening. In fact, the official prayer of the Church contains no Saturday evening prayer or night prayer. Instead, we pray the first of two sets of Sunday evening and night prayers. We do likewise for solemnities like Christmas.

Night, like day, has many faces. It is the time of rest and the time of dreams. It is a time of expectation of good to come. It is a time of calm reflection. It is a time of healing when “tincture of time” works to repair and rejuvenate day-born ills of body, mind and spirit. It is a time of trust and even of preparation for death as we close our eyes and allow the world to continue without our attempting to supervise it.

In the second book of his trilogy Night, Dawn and Day, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel has a beggar say to a child, “Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and daydreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning.”

But night is also the time of nightmares, the time of insomnia, an inability to benefit from night. It is a time of fear and uncertainty as in the old British night prayer: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!”

In the Catholic liturgical calendar, November is the nightfall of the year. It is the month when liturgies focus on the end times. With its feasts of All Saints and All Souls it is a time to remember, reflect upon and pray for the dead. This may be related at least in part to the fact that in the northern hemisphere, November is the month when the leaves of trees finish their autumnal death as the glorious colors of October foliage become brown mulch underfoot and daylight fades into long nights.

Wiesel called his memoir of a year in Nazi concentration camps as a teenager Night. "In Night," he said, "I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end — man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night."

Wiesel speaks from his Jewish background when he says, “we begin again with night,” but Christians, too, can appreciate the profound meaning of his statement.

The evangelist John’s account of the Last Supper ominously points out, “So, after receiving the piece of bread, [Judas] immediately went out. And it was night.” (John 13:30)

And “everything came to an end” in betrayal and the cross.

But that nighttime was not the end of the story for Jesus. Neither is night the end for us.

The “Peace Prayer” popularly misattributed to St. Francis of Assisi though actually composed about 690 years after the saint’s death reminds us, “It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

November is the month to remind ourselves that indeed day begins with nightfall.

And so, in the season of nightfall, we finish a Church year to move on to Advent, Christmas and a new year, a liturgical re-enactment of the history of salvation. We enter night to prepare for dawn.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.