A Late Advent Reflection

Last week we observed the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe here at St. John Bosco Parish with pilgrimages, rosaries, the traditional Mañanitas, and of course the celebration of the Eucharist in the morning and evening.  It is a beautiful feast, and one with great meaning for me because of the three years I spent in Mexico, which included two pilgrimages to the shrine at Tepeyak.  When I looked at the calendar on my wall this past Monday, after a full weekend of activities that followed quickly on the heals of the feast, I was stunned to see that Christmas is only the middle of next week.  It feels like we just started Advent and we've already lit three candles on the wreath.  This "post-Guadalupe hangover," as I call it, highlights the fact that Advent tends to get crowded out amidst so many other activities that fall this time of year. Ours is an extreme example of this reality that Advent is the Forgotten Time.

At our parish it's Our Lady of Guadalupe that overshadows the liturgical time of Advent, but in other places, and in the culture in general, the four odd weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are seen as a time for office parties, gift shopping and making merry.  Because several religious and civil observances occur between the fourth Thursday of November and New Year's Day (we could say the Epiphany on January 6 if we want to be formal about it), the custom of calling this time the Holiday Season has long been in vogue.  I wont even get into all the Christmas decorations that go up early, or the incessant Christmas music on the radio that I have already grown tired of.  In a real way not only the meaning of Advent has been lost, but the meaning of Christmas has been distorted as well.  I'm not going to start complaining about the commercialization of Christmas; we know about that already.  I'm only pointing out that Advent and it's true meaning has been lost and needs to be recovered if it we are going to get back to a better appreciation of what Christmas itself means. 

The first thing to remember is that Advent should be seen as a penitential season.  It doesn't have the rules and regulations of Lent, but the mood is one of waiting and preparation.  But we aren't talking about putting up trees or hitting the shopping malls.  We are preparing for an encounter with Christ, and it is our souls that need to be cleaned, adorned and made ready for the arrival of the King.  In this spirit the readings at Mass focus us on the need for repentance, and the great figure of John the Baptist looms large in this equation.  The Second Sunday of Advent we heard of his preaching on the banks of the Jordan, warning the scribes and Pharisees who had gathered that a time of tribulation was at hand and the moment for turning away from sin had arrived.  It was John's call to repentance that prepared the way for the coming of the Lord and the arrival of the Kingdom he was to preach.

While we are not bound to rules at this time of year, fasting, praying alms giving and making a good confession are ways that we prepare ourselves well for this encounter with the Lord.  Yes, we mean making a worthy communion on Christmas day, but it also calls us to ponder our own mortality, and the reality that one day we will meet Jesus face to face.  One day he will knock on the doors of our soul.  Will our house be clean and in order?  Or will we still be attached to the same sins and vices, indifferent to the needs of the poor around us?  We light the candles of the Advent wreath to remind us of the journey we are on, not just to December 25th, but to eternity, and we better be ready.

The second point, connected to the first, is that Advent is an eschatological time.  The weeks leading up to the beginning of Advent and the first weeks of the liturgical time offer us readings that have to do with the end of the world.  Whether we interpret this to mean the end of an era, or the end the world as we know it, or the return of Christ in his glory when time will cease, the Church tries to focus us on the reality that nothing in this world is permanent.  Jesus will return, the elements will be destroyed by fire, as St. Peter puts it, the dead will rise and a new heaven and new earth will be established.

In the past few decades talk of the end times has been shunned by some in Catholic circles.  Talk of heaven and eternal reward is sometimes portrayed as an opiate, in the Marxist sense, used to keep people from concentrating on issues of peace and justice.  The new emphasis since the Council on social justice, reiterated by Pope Francis (though stressed by all the popes since Vatican II), is a positive development.  But in our exuberance and zeal we should be careful not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  Christ wants to see faith on the earth when he returns, meaning that we are living the Beatitudes to the fullest.  John the Baptist called Herod out for sexual immorality, but he also told people that repentance meant sharing what ever excess they may have with the poor and being satisfied with their wages (we can assume he meant a wage that is just).  He also told those in authority not to abuse their power for personal gain.  It is tempting to focus on these passages, as well as others concerning matters of justice and equity, making the Gospel a political manifesto unconcerned with piety and personal holiness.  

But our Lord also said that we should pray constantly.  He may not have talk much about sexual morality in an explicit way, but he did name a list of sexual sins and vices among a list of transgressions that stem from a disordered interior life.  Our Lord is interested in the whole person; his interior life as well as in his community and civic responsibilities, because the two things are linked together. All these aspects of our life must be seen in the context of eternity; wealth, power, property, sexual apatite, prestige and pleasures of all sorts will pass away.  Unless our hearts are set on the things of heaven we will come to think that created things are all we have to live for, and our time on earth will be spent in a misguided search for fulfilment that will never come.

We have already entered into the second part of Advent; the Great Days that focus us more on the mystery of the incarnation and the events leading up to Jesus' birth.  I will have more to say on this later.

But for now I leave off by saying that for Advent to be seen as more than a parenthesis between Thanksgiving and Christmas we need to get back to it's deeper meaning.  We should be concerned with the hear and now, but this preoccupation will only result in positive and long lasting action if we have the entire picture in perspective.  Advent with its call to repentance and reminder of the transience of the world does that for us.