The Season of Waiting
by Connor Park
What is the season that starts after Thanksgiving? The obvious answer to this question is Christmas, right? After all, that’s what all the advertisers, retailers, and peppermint latte makers tell us year in and year out. Without fail, each year, right around the first week in December, everything around us gets decked out in red and green and we remember the coming of God in the flesh by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on being in a big hurry with nowhere to go.
Believe it or not, this vision of the winter season is relatively new, so far as Christian culture goes. When ancient and medieval Christians set out to celebrate the birth of Jesus, they set aside the four weeks preceding the celebration of Christ’s Mass on December 25 to be mindful of the Messiah’s absence. They called this season Advent, from the Latin word for “arrival” or “coming,” because during this time before Christmas, they sought to remember that just as God’s people waited for deliverance from foreign empires, so the Church was waiting for Jesus’ return, the Second Advent.
Even today, in the liturgical practices of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans, the four Sundays preceding Christmas are spent reading Jeremiah, Isaiah, Revelation, and the apocalyptic messages Jesus taught right before his death. Hardly the holly-jolly Christmas of animatronic TV specials and Buddy the Elf, is it?
The trappings of today’s American Christmas Season more often resemble a mad rush of conspicuous consumerism more than anything else. (How telling is it that mere hours after celebrating a holiday called Thanksgiving, so many of us bundled up to stand in line for sales on Black Friday?) Constantly hurried forward by our culture, I believe that the best lessons we can learn from Advent are remembrance and anticipation.
By reading and reflecting on the foretelling of Israel’s deliverance, the church remembers that we are called to be an alien people in a foreign land. Identifying with the story of Jesus’ heritage enables us to be conscious that “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” The story of the Church is of a community on the outskirts of empire, not of culture warriors throwing down the seats of power. In the pre-Christian story and in the reminder that another Advent awaits, we embody the message of Christ’s humility toward us and remember that our ransom is coming.
Advent is also a time of anticipation. So much of our contemporary holiday celebration revolves around fulfilling our desires in the moment. Taking time to recognize that we cannot possibly have everything at once is a powerful statement amid the rapid fire cycle of present buying-wrapping-giving and party-going-hosting-regretting. Advent says to our hearts, “The best is yet to come,” when we’ve been taught to grope in the dark for our best life now. Many churches and households light candles during the four weeks of Advent, first one candle, then another, until four candles are lit upon the threshold of Christmas Eve. This season of anticipation reminds us that the fullness of light often comes sooner than we think, but longer than we’d wish.
So what does all this mean? I’m not urging you all to go out and be received into the Catholic Church, nor do I want to come off as an anti-happiness Scrooge. Rather, I think that the practice of Advent can remind us of the joy and full presence of Christ that we all await, by being mindful of what it is to feel his absence. Catholic writer St. Charles Borromeo wrote, “The Church asks us to understand that Christ, who came once in the flesh, is prepared to come again. When we remove all obstacles to his presence he will come, at any hour and moment, to dwell spiritually in our hearts, bringing with him the riches of his grace.”
In the still and quiet of Advent, though the world hurries on around us, we may find peace.
