November is traditionally the month of the dead, beginning as it does with All Saints and All Souls. Particular religious orders and particular regions often add to these: All Saints of Ireland, Deceased Clergy of Southern Arabia, Deceased Friends and Benefactors of the Order of Preachers, to give just three examples. November is the right month to assign to these commemorations because it comes at the end of the Church’s year when she contemplates the Last Things, the end of the world, and (at Advent) the Second Coming.

By the same token, November is the month of resurrection: of death as the moment of entry into eternal life. This can feel encouraging; or it can feel quite the opposite. If Judgement consists in God’s telling us, ‘Whatever you have become through your own actions, that is what you are’, then that makes immortality terrifying. We need all the help we can, from God especially, to become something that we can tolerate being: permanently, definitively, for ever.

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