German Advent calendar

YESTERDAY, as my husband and I were driving home from a twilight walk, Christmas lights went on all around us. Someone had turned on a master switch, or so it seemed. Lighted icicles dangled from gutters and electric nets encased shrubbery. Snowman inflatables rose from the dead on suburban lawns, a stuffed Santa held onto a roof for dear life and bright red boxes of peppermint bark adorned the aisles of Trader Joe’s. Was this Christmas Eve or December 2nd? I don’t remember so much decoration this early in the season when I was a child, except in stores. I felt as if I was in a Christmas theme park. None of it expressed to me the beauty and anticipation of Advent. Imagine if you received a birthday cake a month before your birthday. Would it mean as much?

Advent calls on us to be especially counter-cultural. We are asked to resist the trappings of a Christmas celebrated too soon. We are asked to seek silence, at least inner silence, and cultivate true sorrow for our sins. Take a walk beneath winter’s penitential skies. Thank God for all the innumerable benefits bestowed upon you. Get up perhaps just 15 minutes earlier in the morning. Find time for penance, spiritual reading and meditation on these bottomless mysteries. Even if you have a very busy life, lift your mind in prayer for minutes here and there as often as you can during the day. Don’t let this opportunity pass to prepare yourself for the profound truths of Christmas. Your life is whizzing by. Christmas is an 18-wheel freight truck without brakes careening down the highway. It’s a ferris wheel that won’t stop so you can, please, please get off — and yet you have a soul to save and an infant Savior to love with all your heart and mind.

I do not mean to suggest that we should go to the Puritanical extreme of not enjoying the sparkling lights, decorated greenery, music of the season and gift-buying. I don’t mean to suggest we should cut ourselves off from the brightened mood of pre-Christmas when we find it. We should strive for balance. We are soul and body.

In vain did the angels sing on that December night; in vain did shepherds receive and welcome the invitation to adore the Babe and know Him; in vain did the Magi come from the east, asking where they were to find the crib of the King that was born. At this last example, the city of Jerusalem was somewhat moved; but the astonishment was only for a moment, and the old indifference soon stifled the good tidings.

Thus it is, O Jesus, that Thou comest unto darkness, and darkness does not comprehend Thee. We beseech Thee, let our darkness comprehend the light, and desire it. (First Sunday of Advent, The Liturgical Year)

More from Dom Prosper Guéranger’s Liturgical Year:

If, now that we have described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that the mystery of the Coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.

‘In the first coming,’ says St. Bernard, ‘He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.’

This, then, is the mystery of Advent. Let us now listen to the explanation of this threefold visit of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in his third sermon de Adventu: ‘There are three comings of our Lord; the first in the flesh; the second in the soul; the third at the judgment. The first was at midnight according to those words of the Gospel: At Midnight there was a cry made, Lo, the Bridegroom cometh! But this first coming is long since past for Christ has been seen on the earth and has conversed among men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love Him, He will come unto us and take up His abode with us. So that this second coming is full of uncertainty to us; for who, save the Spirit of God, knows them that are of God? They that are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things, know indeed when He comes, but whence He cometh or whither He goeth they know not. As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will be, most uncertain when it will be; for nothing is more sure than death, and nothing less sure than the hour of death. When they shall say, peace and security, says the apostle, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape. So that the first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible. In His first coming, Christ was judged by men unjustly; in His second, He renders us just by His grace; His third, He will judge all things with justice. In His first, a lamb; in His last, a lion; in the one between the two, the tenderest of friends.’

The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardour the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins her own supplications. These longings for the Messias expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they have a reality and efficacy of their own, an influence in the great act of God’s munificence, whereby He gave us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after  receiving and granting, that He sent, in the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon the earth, which made it bud forth the Saviour.

Read more here.

Find daily Advent reflections here.

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