Advent:
Advent is my favourite liturgical season. I know Easter is THE season, but Advent encourages me in a way Lent is never able to. Liturgical heresy! I love the Scripture readings, the antiphons and many of the hymns. They create a sense of joyful hope.
Expectation:
If the feasts of November remind us about endings, Advent contemplates beginnings. It is a time of waiting – not passive and powerless – but waiting with expectation. Rather like parents awaiting the birth of their child. There is joyful expectation, active preparation and a modicum of terror at the responsibility of nurturing the child.
It is the nature of Christian faith that we live in the ‘in between time’. God is revealed in Christ, yet is to be fully revealed; redemption has been given, yet is to be fully apprehended; Christ is risen, yet the full body of Christ, the church, is yet to rise; the promises are fulfilled, but are yet to be fulfilled. We live in this time where the Spirit is given yet we still ‘wait in joyful hope for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ’. It is precisely this ‘in between-ness’ that draws us towards the fulfilment of the End – the Parousia - and draws us into Christ and matures us into Christ.
In this ‘in between time’ it is our God inspired actions that will bring about the final fulfilment. St. Francis of Assisi wrote that we are mothers of Christ when we bring him to birth in our lives through our good works. So, like parents awaiting the birth of their child, Advent is a metaphor for our whole lives. We await the birth, we give birth and like every desired and loved birth, it is an act of hope in the goodness of the future.
The Two-Fold Coming Of Christ:
So the two images of birth and the fulfilment of the End, come together in the liturgy of this season. Advent-Christmas-Epiphany celebrates the birth of Jesus and celebrates his second coming.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote, ‘We preach not one coming only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the first. The first revealed the meaning of his patient endurance; the second brings with it the crown of the divine kingdom….. In his first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger. In his second coming he is clothed with light as with a garment…..It is not enough for us, then, to be content with his first coming; we must wait in hope for his second coming; we must wait in hope of his second coming. What we said at his first coming, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, we shall repeat at his last coming. Running out with the angels to meet the Master we shall cry out with adoration, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’
As we prepare to celebrate Jesus born into our human condition, born one of us we do so with the knowledge that already we share in his resurrection condition and that one day, at the End, all creation will fully share in that resurrection. That the hope that is part of human birth will be fulfilled when all creation’s destiny is revealed.
However, Advent also reminds us that like good parents, we must nurture and protect the life entrusted to our care. This life is nothing more nor less than the mystery of Christ – Emmanuel, God-with-us. We are the mothers of Christ…..
Many Comings:
While the liturgy of Advent focuses of the great two-fold coming of Christ, in our daily lives we can celebrate many times Christ comes to us as we are attentive to those graced moments when he is offering us his love. Those moments may be heavily disguised with hassles, anguish or nuisances or they may be moments of friendship, insight, goodness. Grace means gift. They are moments of grace in which Christ ‘grows’ in us and we in him. They also ask us to prepare the way of the Lord through our compassion, justice, attentiveness and graceful giving and receiving.
So, for us, the waiting of Advent is that of the parent awaiting the birth. We wait in joy and hope; responsibility and courage and above all, we wait in love.
I wish you a blessed Advent. May each of you ‘wait in joyful hope’.
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