EVEN a little spiritual reading during the liturgical season of Advent, which begins tomorrow, may go a long way toward cultivating detachment from the secular frenzy and encouraging the prayer and penance that have been the true purpose of this season for thousands of years. Good reading helps us understand why we celebrate Christmas at all.
To that end, below are three books that offer deep insight into these immense mysteries. I have quoted them often over the years and have never grown tired of them.
Bethlehem: The Sacred Infancy of Our Most Dear and Blessed Redeemer by Fr. Frederick Faber: Here is an elegant, philosophical and poetic meditation on the Nativity by this great orator, a 19th-century convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. Whether it be Mary and Joseph, the beasts by the manger, the shepherds, the Holy Innocents, or the traveling kings, Faber brings it all before you with a powerful immediacy. “Old as it is, it is still new.” And so it is in this book, first published in 1860. There are nine chapters: “The Bosom Of The Eternal Father,” “The Bosom Of Mary,” “The Midnight Cave,” “The First Worshippers,” “The Infant God,” “Soul And Body,” “Calvary Before Its Time,” “Heaven Already,” and “The Feet Of The Eternal Father.”
On the helplessness of the Divine Baby, Fr. Faber writes:
All the world’s helpfulness was but a ray out of his helplessness. No man’s work, be it for himself or for his fellows, has any true strength in it, no man’s strength is any thing better than effort and gesticulation, except the weakness of Chris have touched it, nerved it, and made it manful with heavenly manfulness. What are half the literatures and philosophies in the world but gesticulation, men in attitudes which effect nothing, voices raised to screaming partly to save appearances and counterfeit strength by noise? The strong man is he who has gone deepest down into the weakness of Christ. The enduring work is that which Christ’s humiliation has touched secretly, and made it almost omnipotent.”
The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton: There are many great things about this book, published in 1927, by another famous British convert, but the best in my opinion is how the author brings to life the currents of thought and spiritual realities in the pagan world at the time of the Incarnation. Of these three books, this is by far the best one for skeptics — and there is, by the way, nothing shameful about sincere doubts about the Incarnation. Chesterton covers the entire Gospel account of Christ’s life, examining at length the events in Bethlehem. “Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly,” he wrote.
Chesterton does not sentimentalize the Christmas story:
We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of a mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of men. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion.
Unless we understand the presence of that enemy, we shall not only miss the point of Christianity, but even miss the point of Christmas. Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense a very complex thing. Its unique note is the simultaneous striking of many notes; of humility, of gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and of drama. It is not only an occasion for the peacemakers any more than for the merry-makers; it is not only a Hindu peace conference any more than it is only a Scandinavian winter feast. There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won.
Finally, Volume one of The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger, first published in 1870, is surely the best book ever written on the observance of Advent itself. A good description and a warning are found here:
The Liturgical Year has been likened to the “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, which the Council of Trent placed alongside the Bible as a work of authority. Dom Guéranger’s “The Liturgical Year” has thus been called the “Summa” of the liturgy of the Catholic Church. However, a word of warning to the reader, just like the Summa Theologica”, you will encounter some dry difficult parts (much like the Israelites in their forty years of penance in the desert), but there will also be found oases of deep spiritual refreshment. Persevere, read slowly, stop to think, and you will draw much fruit from this masterful work. Put away and put aside the modern-man’s desire for fast-food, fast-service, being fast-tracked. There is no fast way of getting to Heaven (except for fasting perhaps!!). Besides, I don’t think God appreciates being put quickly aside so that we can run off to do what we wrongly imagine to be “better” things. The season that we have entered should see us being more of a Mary than a Martha!
The famous Benedictine monk writes of the history of Advent, its rites and ancient observance:
The name Advent [From the Latin word Adventus, which signifies a coming] is applied, in the Latin Church, to that period of the year, during which the Church requires the faithful to prepare for the celebration of the feast of Christmas, the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. The mystery of that great day had every right to the honour of being prepared for by prayer and works of penance; and, in fact, it is impossible to state, with any certainty, when this season of preparation (which had long been observed before receiving its present name of Advent) was first instituted. It would seem, however, that its observance first began in the west, since it is evident that Advent could not have been looked on as a preparation for the feast of Christmas, until that feast was definitively fixed to the twenty-fifth of December; which was done in the east only towards the close of the fourth century; whereas it is certain that the Church of Rome kept the feast on that day at a much earlier period.
We must look upon Advent in two different lights: first, as a time of preparation, properly so called, for the birth of our Saviour, by works of penance; and secondly, as a series of ecclesiastical Offices drawn up for the same purpose. We find, as far back as the fifth century, the custom of giving exhortations to the people in order to prepare them for the feast of Christmas. We have two sermons of Saint Maximus of Turin on this subject, not to speak of several others which were formerly attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, but which were probably written by St. Cesarius of Aries. If these documents do not tell us what was the duration and what the exercises of this holy season, they at least show us how ancient was the practice of distinguishing the time of Advent by special sermons. Saint Ivo of Chartres, St. Bernard, and several other doctors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, have left us set sermons de Adventu Domini, quite distinct from their Sunday homilies on the Gospels of that season. In the capitularia of Charles the Bald, in 846, the bishops admonish that prince not to call them away from their Churches during Lent or Advent, under pretext of affairs of the State or the necessities of war, seeing that they have special duties to fulfil, and particularly that of preaching during those sacred times.
To observe Advent in the modern world is to be counter-cultural and that was true even in the 19th century. Guéranger frequently reminds his readers of this and that they must struggle against the mounting anti-Christian spirit.
I hope these three great books make it easier for you to be an outsider at this meaningful and beautiful time of year. The Christmas liturgical season lasts until February so if you like any of them, they are wonderful companions and guides through the entire period.
