By Stephen Beale, Catholic Exchange - The Church has a really strange way of preparing us for the joy of the Christmas season... It has us spend much of Advent reading about the end of the world... Consider the gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent this year: There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then. . . . .