ADVENT SEASON

ADVENT SEASON, PREPARATION TO CHRISTMAS

After the last week of ordinary time, the Church starts immediately a new liturgical year. Advent is a time of preparation for the important feast of Christmas. What the Church celebrates is the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Advent is a time of meditation on Jesus’ three comings: he came, he will come, he is coming… As a matter of fact, the time of the Lord’s coming has always three dimensions: messianic time which we relive with our ancestors in the faith (e.g. : Old Testament readings throughout Advent) ending with Jesus’ historical coming; and then his eschatological coming at the end of time (which is always recalled on the first Sunday of Advent especially in the Gospel), and lastly, between his first coming (in the past) and his return in glory (in the future), we’ve got to live (today) our faith half way between the two. Christ yesterday: he came; Christ tomorrow: he will come; Christ today: he is coming. 

In this period of Advent, there are three persons who help us prepare Christmas: Isaiah, John the Baptist and Mary. Together with Isaiah (and other prophets of the Old Testament) we live with them their dream, their hope, the new world, the watchman; we wait for the Star to appear, the Light to come, the Savior’s apparition… Isaiah proclaims a bright future, in spite of despair. In a time of war, he sees a future of peace. With John the Baptist, conversion and change of heart are on the menu; it is he who points out Jesus, it is he who shows us the way and prepares it and makes us meet with Jesus…  Mary is the one who receives Jesus, the Son of God, in her heart, in her body; she is the woman who says “yes” with much joy… In a more intimate way, we live this time of waiting with the Virgin Mary who bore the child in her womb, and as all mothers do, she lived strongly connected to him in the faith. “Blessed is she because she believed”. Together with Mary, the time of waiting is at the same time one of contemplation and of joy.

Finally, this important time in the Church serves as an invitation to adopt three attitudes: conversion, prayer and sharing. Conversion:  change of life, radical change, new orientation in life. Prayer:  pray more, with more intensity; watch and pray. Sharing: not only renounce certain things and share with those who are in need, but also be more available and strive ever more to do good. 

The whole season of Advent and that of Christmas particularly help us to meditate on this great mystery of the Incarnation. God became man, He came among us to save us. Let us remember the hopeful words spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “O that you would tear the heavens and come down... You came down... From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who works for those who wait for him” (Is 63,19; 64,3). This is what is extraordinary: God “descended” on this earth, He “tore” the heavens, He sent us his beloved Son, Emmanuel. The invisible God made himself visible in Jesus (“God saves”), the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour. This unique event in the history of humanity is something marvellous that expresses all the love, all the tenderness and all the goodness of our God. The Son of God became our brother, a man among men, passing through the vulnerability of a little child. The Son of God made himself "someone among us" so that all human beings would become sons and daughters of God. God has invited us to “communion”. Wonderful!

                                                                                                Camiel, sdb