Hello, 4:15 a.m.

A week from today, 4:15 a.m. and I are going to resume our annual nine-day relationship. “Friendship” would be too strong a word. Some days, I’ll leap out of bed; some days, I’ll groan out loud.

Yes, it’s that time again, time for the Filipino Simbang Gabi/Misa de Gallo (“Mass of the Rooster”) novena that one of my parishes, St. Charles Borromeo in Arlington, Virginia, hosts every December 16-24. Mass starts at 5 a.m. On a slow weekday, we’ll get 150 to 200 people; on weekends, people will drive from as far away as Baltimore to join in the tradition and fellowship and we’ll have standing room only. There’s always great food after Mass.

I started going along with a friend back in 2006, just a day or two at first. But I got hooked, and have made the entire novena the past four or five years.

I always start out starry-eyes about how holy and pious I’m going to be. That lasts about two or three days. Then comes cranky for a day or two. Then, just about the time I’ve decided my Simbang Gabi lesson is the importance of just showing up in life, something amazing happens. Last year, it was the soul-stirring homily from a priest who is deaf. The year before, it was the total devotion of the cutest little altar boy ever.

This is probably the tiredest I’ve ever been in the days leading up to Simbang Gabi. There’s a lot on my plate, all good stuff, but a lot. I thought about not doing a daily Simbang Gabi blog this year, since I’m already doing a daily Advent calendar entry and YouTube video about female saints. But then I decided I need to blog, because it keeps me focused on a takeaway from each pre-dawn Mass. And at the end of the novena, those takeaways are always worth a few days of being awake at 4:15 a.m.