The Season of Advent

(November 28, 2009) Advent is the beginning of the new liturgical year. This is the time to prepare for the coming of the Lord and it is a period of waiting. The liturgy of Advent is very rich in its presentation and gives us an over view of the preparation that took place for the coming of the Messiah. The liturgy also gives the immediate preparation that took place with John the Baptist and Blessed Virgin Mary performing an important role. It is also an immediate preparation for us for our annual Christmas celebration and the church wants us to be ready spiritually and concentrate on the primacy of the feast of the king who is coming into the world. But it is also a reminder for us that Christ will come at the end times to reunite the world to him.
The Advent theme, in the context of the festival of Christmas, is coming or waiting. It is clear that the word 'Advent/Coming' is being understood on more than one level. First of all, we are preparing ourselves during what is basically a penitential period to celebrate in a fitting manner the coming of Jesus and the manifestation of God among us as a human being. But secondly, we are also being reminded of the reason why Jesus was born among us, namely, to be our salvation, our wholeness. He comes now so that we may be equipped and ready to meet him when he comes again at the end of time "to judge the living and the dead". Then we hope to hear his words of welcome, "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." There is, however, a third coming which is also of crucial importance to us. This is when God enters into our daily life and calls us to follow him and be with him and share his life. God not only came in Jesus at Bethlehem; he not only will come at the end of time to gather us all to himself; he comes into our lives at every moment, through every person and every experience. For God in Jesus is our Emmanuel, God-with-us. "I am with you always".
Advent is the season that introduces the new liturgical year. It consists of four Sundays starting with the Sunday closest to November 30th. The word "advent" is derived from the Latin adventus, which means "coming" or "arrival." In the societies of the Roman Empire, the word adventus referred to the arrival of a person of dignity and great power, a king, emperor, or even one of the gods. For Christians, Advent is the time when the church patiently prepares for the coming of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. The idea behind it is that God who became incarnate came to live an earthly life and lived among us as a human person. It's something to celebrate, rejoice, because just by being in it, God was giving the supreme blessing to the created world. But this birth led to an execution of this same God, by us on behalf of us, and then the greatest news that death will not end it all. So it's not something that one can just go rushing into. We need to take stock of what that baby Jesus was here for.
Advent is the first part of a larger liturgical season that includes Christmas and Epiphany and continues until the beginning of Lent. Even though Advent occurs in the month of December and is often considered as a prelude to Christmas, it is not simply about waiting for the birth of Christ. The Advent season focuses on Christ's threefold coming -- past, present, and future. First, we remember the Lord's humble first coming in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. Second, we give thanks for His present and continual coming to us through Word and Sacrament. Finally, we look forward with hope and longing to His second coming in glory on Judgment Day. The theme of readings and teachings during Advent is often to prepare for the Second Coming while commemorating the First Coming of Christ at Christmas. With the view of directing the thoughts of Christians to the first coming of Jesus Christ as Savior, and to his second coming as Judge, special lessons are prescribed for each of the four Sundays in Advent. The usual liturgical color in Western Christianity for Advent is purple or violet. The color is often used for hangings around the church, on the vestments of the clergy, and also the tabernacle. On the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, rose colour may be used instead, referring to the joyful arrival of the king.
Historically, the primary sanctuary color of Advent is Purple. This is the color of penitence and fasting as well as the color of royalty to welcome the Advent of the King. Purple is still used in Catholic churches. The purple of Advent is also the color of suffering used during Lent and Holy Week. This points out to an important connection between Jesus’ birth and death. The nativity, the Incarnation, cannot be separated from the crucifixion. The purpose of Jesus’ coming into the world, of the "Word made flesh" and dwelling among us is to reveal God and His grace to the world through Jesus’ life and teaching, but also through his suffering, death, and resurrection. To reflect this emphasis, originally Advent was a time of penitence and fasting, much as the Season of Lent and so shared the color of Lent. With the focus on the Advent or Coming of Jesus, especially in anticipating His Second Advent, there is the need of a joyful preparation for that coming.
Advent, as we know it today, is a creation of the Western churches that looked to Rome as their leader. There were two main streams flowing into it. The first came out of France, during the fourth century AD, probably from Celtic monks. A period of about six weeks before Christmas was used as a penitential and devotional period, a lesser Lent. The second stream came from Rome, where there was a practice of having a three-to-six week fast during which people had to come to church regularly. There was a period of fast before the feast of Christmas time. The current form of Advent crystallized under Pope Gregory I, who set the four-week length, and wrote liturgical materials for use in Advent. By the 10th century, the Celtic monks got ready the prayers and practices and fully brought them into the Roman form, including liturgical colors. The 20th century brought a rediscovery of joy in Advent preparations. Some Catholic areas hold special services on the nine days before Christmas starting 16 December, as a worship novena.
The Eastern Orthodox have a preparation for Christmas, too, called the Nativity Fast. It starts the day after the 14 November, on the feast of St. Philip the Apostle and goes for 40 days until 24 December. It's much more like Western-Church Lent than Advent, though it is not as strict as the Orthodox's Great Lent. Like in Lent, the Nativity Fast's purpose is to prepare through repentance, and it is a somber period. The strictest day is 24 December, the Nativity Paramony, when no solid food is eaten until after the Vespers service that evening.
Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt as they cried out from their bitter oppression. It is the cry of those who have experienced the tyranny of injustice in a world under the curse of sin, and yet who have hope of deliverance by a God who has heard the cries of oppressed slaves and brought deliverance! It is that hope, however faint at times, and that God, however distant He sometimes seems, that brings to the world the anticipation of a King who will rule with truth and justice and righteousness over His people and His creation. It is that hope that once anticipated, and now anticipates anew, the reign of an Anointed One, a Messiah, who will bring peace and justice and righteousness to the world. Part of the expectation also anticipates a judgment on sin and a calling of the world to accountability before God. We long for God to come and set the world right! Yet, as the prophet Amos warned, the expectation of a coming judgment at the "Day of the Lord" may not be the day of light that we might want, because the penetrating light of God’s judgment on sin will shine just as brightly on God’s people.
Because of this important truth, especially in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Season of Advent has been a time of fasting and penitence for sins similar to the Season of Lent. However, a different emphasis for the season of Advent has gradually unfolded in much of the rest of the church. The season of Advent has come to be celebrated more in terms of expectation or anticipation. Yet, the anticipation of the Coming of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament and Judaism was not in connection with remembrance of sins. Rather, it was in the context of oppression and injustice, the longing for redemption, not from personal guilt and sin but from the systemic evil of the world expressed in evil empires and tyrants. It is in that sense that all creation groans for its redemption as we witness the evil that so dominates our world. This spirit is well expressed in the parable of the bridesmaids who are anxiously awaiting the coming of the Bridegroom and filled with joy at his coming. At the same time there is the need for preparation. But even then, the prayer of Advent is still: Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel!
Advent is one of the few Christian festivals that can be observed in the home as well as at church. In its association with Christmas, Advent is a natural time to involve children into creative activities at home that are directly connected with worship at church. In the home an Advent wreath is often placed on the dining table and the candles lighted at meals, with Scripture readings preceding the lighting of the candles, especially on Sunday. A new candle is lighted each Sunday during the four weeks, and then the same candles are lighted each meal during the week. In this context, it provides the opportunity for family devotion and prayer together, and helps teach the Faith to children, especially if they are involved in reading the daily Scriptures.
It is common in many homes to try to mark the beginning of Advent in other ways as well, for the same purpose of instruction in the faith. Some families decorate the house for the beginning of Advent, or bake special cookies or treats, or simply begin to use table coverings for meals. An Advent Calendar is a way to keep children involved in the entire season. There are a wide variety of Advent calendars, but usually they are simply a card or poster with windows that can be opened, one each day of Advent, to reveal some symbol or picture associated with the Old Testament story leading up to the birth of Jesus. One unique and specialized Advent calendar that can be used either in the home or the sanctuary is a Jesse Tree. All of these provide opportunities to teach children the significance of this sacred time, and to remind ourselves of it as well. In congregational worship, the Advent wreath is the central teaching symbol of the season, the focal point for drawing the congregation into the beginning of the story of redemption that will unfold throughout the church year. For this reason, members of the congregation are often involved in lighting the Advent candles and reading the appropriate Scriptures each Sunday.
The season of Advent just like the season of Lent is about hope. It is not just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of pain and suffering, although that is certainly a significant part of it. It is more about hope that human existence has meaning and possibility beyond our present existence, a hope that the limits of our lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be. We have a great future of the redemption experienced here and now in the nativity of Jesus. It is not that we have possibility in ourselves, but that God is a God of new things and so all things are possible. God's people in the first century wanted Him to come and change their oppressive circumstances, and were angry when those immediate circumstances did not change. But that is a short sighted view of the nature of hope. Our hope cannot be in circumstances, no matter how badly we want them or how important they are to us. The reality of human existence, with which the Book of Job struggles, is that God's people experience that physical existence in the same way that others do. Christians get sick and die, Christians are victims of violent crimes, and Christians are hurt and killed in traffic accidents, bombings, war, and in some parts of the world, famine.
Our Christian hope has to be realistic. If our hope is only in our circumstances, as we define them to be good or as we want them to be to make us happy, we will always be disappointed. That is why we hope, not in circumstances, but in God. He has continually, over the past thousands of years, revealed himself to be a God of newness, of possibility, of redemption, the recovery or transformation of possibility from endings that goes beyond what we can think or even imagine. The best example of that is the crucifixion itself, followed by the resurrection. That shadow of the cross falls even over the manger. Yet, it all begins in the hope that God will come and come again into our world to reveal himself as a God of newness, of possibility, a God of new things. During this time of Advent we contemplate that hope embodied, enriched, and incarnated, in a newborn baby, the perfect example of newness, potential, and possibility. During Advent, we groan and long for that newness with the hope, the expectation, indeed the faith, that God will once again be faithful to see our circumstances, to hear our cries, to know our longings for a better world and a whole life. We also hope that as he first came as an infant, so he will come again as King and awe are certain that he will come to unite all to himself.
Our human experience tells us that those who have suffered and still hope for salvation in Jesus, understand far more about God and about life, than those who have not. We must know what hope is about: a way to live, not just to survive, but to live authentically amidst all the problems of life with a Faith that continues to see possibility when there is no present evidence of it, just because God is God. We all await a joyful future and that is also the wonder of Advent. This Season invites us to ready ourselves spiritually to receive the Lord at Christmas and fill ourselves with new joy that the Lord has come. This is the season of hope and expectation of the Lord who will be with us at Christmas.