We think of Advent as the run-up to celebrating the birth of our Savior and looking forward to his return. It’s a season of preparation that when finished, is finished till next year. That’s the liturgical Advent, though. Part of our communal life as Catholics and therefore regularized, even “routinized” as the sociologists put it, put into the schedule and set up with rites and readings. And given up when it’s done what it needed to do. That communal life as Catholics points us to the End and trains us for it all year round.