October 1 marks the start of the fourth and final quarter of 2024. In 90 days, we will be celebrating New Year’s Day and making “resolutions.”

It’s your last chance to consider what you did with last year’s resolutions.

I’ve tried this year to flag the passage of the quarters and, well, we’re in the final stretch of 2024. Back in the spring, I commented on the passage of the first quarter of the year and the unexpected deaths of road workers when Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapsed. For much of America — but not for the families of the six victims — the event has been forgotten. For those six, eternity began six months ago.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, this time of year is a time for taking account and making preparation. The squirrels outside your window should remind you of that: They’re busy gathering ye acorns while ye may. And while they may instinctually react to the change of season, rational man can mark the passage of the days and years and ask, with the proverb, whether we’ve grown a year older but none the wiser. Wisdom, after all, in a Biblical sense refers not to abstract learning but to knowing how to live — and knowing how to live starts with living in right relation to God. So, as we hit the last laps of 2024 and review our good resolutions with which we began this year, we can ask: Are we the wiser?

The last time I shared these thoughts — on July 1 — summer was in full bloom. Now we are reminded by John Greenleaf Whittier that, unlike the cycle of the year, the autumn of life is one that augurs no return — at least in this life — to spring or summer.

But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,
For whom the flowers no longer blow,
Who standest blighted and forlorn,
Like Autumn waiting for the snow;

No hope is thine of sunnier hours,
Thy Winter shall no more depart;
No Spring revive thy wasted flowers,
Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.  (“Autumn Thoughts”)

But as history, including our history, has a purpose, an end, a telos, let us not waste this quarter. Sure, as the quarter goes on, things get busier as “the holidays” approach. That’s why using time wisely now is important. Now is the time to consider apportioning significance to that time, to not being swept up in the fury of secular busy-ness, and to renew once more our resolve for what matters — in other words, revisiting our resolutions. “Now,” after all, is the moment of  grace when we might hear and need to let our hearts be softened by His Voice (Ps 95: 7-8). “Now” is one of the two times we ask Our Mother’s prayers.

Building on the Parable of the Vineyard Owner who, nevertheless, generously hires workers at 5 pm, St. John Chrysostom tells us not to fear, even if we have come at the 11^th hour, because with the Lord “even the last will be first.” Being last is not an excuse for being late (ask five foolish virgins) but, like the last quarter of the year, is an alarm bell to get things in order.

Come December 31, we can sing the old hymn, “Lapsus est annus,” “the year is gone, beyond recall” (see here). That’s not quite true yet, but the days are short and the clock is ticking.