by Michael McCabe SMA
This coming Sunday the Church begins a new liturgical year with the season of Advent: four weeks of preparation for the great feast of Christmas. This is a long tradition in the Church going back to the ninth century. Like Lent, Advent is a season with particular hymns, readings, antiphons, and responses each day, both in the Eucharist and in the Liturgy of the Hours. Advent also has its own special symbols: the wreath and the four candles.Â
What is the purpose of all this build-up to the feast of Christ’s birth? It is certainly not to engage in a game of pretence, as if we were still waiting for Christ’s first coming. Christ has come. He has lived among us and, once and for all, changed the course of human history. And he will not come in the flesh again. Moreover, Christ is with us now. He lives on in us (the members of his Church) through his Spirit. Nor is the purpose of Advent to teach us something new about Christ, something we don’t already know. No! Advent is designed to help us to appreciate more fully the significance of Christ’s first coming, and to make more room for him in our hearts now. Its purpose is to help us ‘see Christ more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more closely’ (St Richard of Chichester).
For this to happen we need to take Advent seriously. Unfortunately we live at a time, and in a culture, that tends to make us leapfrog Advent and launch into Christmas immediately. No sooner have the macabre celebrations of Halloween ended than we begin arranging Christmas parties and shopping for presents till we drop. By the time Christmas arrives we are so exhausted we long for it to be over. Because we have not taken Advent seriously, because we have not slowed down and given ourselves a chance to respond to the special grace of this beautiful season, we lose out on the grace of Christmas as well, and all the wonder it should evoke in us.  Â
In his poem, Advent, Patrick Kavanagh has the striking line: ‘Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder’. When we are saturated with a surfeit of material things– as easily happens today with the relentless commercialisation of Christmas – we lose our capacity for wonder.   We may even get to the stage where we are unable to feel anything but boredom and exhaustion. How could it be otherwise? Our senses were made for our hearts, not the other way round. We need to draw back from the commercial forces launching themselves at our senses, and give our hearts a chance to cope, to focus, to rest, to slow down. Advent is a time for such slowing down and focusing: taking in less, but learning to appreciate more. The season of Advent should have a certain quality of retreat. It is a time for us to attune ourselves to what the Lord is saying to us through the scripture readings, hymns, antiphons and symbols of this beautiful season. If we do this, and take Advent seriously, perhaps we may, to quote Kavanagh again, ‘charm back the luxury of a child’s soul’, and ‘return to doom the knowledge we stole but could not use.’ .  And Christ may come to meet us ‘with a January flower’.