Looking Forward: The Season of Advent and a New Church Year
Advent is a complicated season. I’m tempted to say that this is the most complicated season of the Church Year. Advent presumes that we Christians have been formed in an adult faith that is prepared to celebrate an adult Christmas. And, as we know, Advent isn’t a season that is focused only on the past, because this is the time we focus our attention on the One who comes among us right now and who will come in glory in the future.
Although Advent is a season of hope, hope seems to be in short supply these days. So, as we look toward the coming of the Advent Season, we would do well to think about what hope might mean for the Church and the world.
As I think of past Advents, I realized that, in my own prayer and reflection, I made a mistake in my Advent-ing. Looking back, I see that I was guilty of hoping for something. I hoped for justice. I hoped for peace. I hoped for equity and an end to poverty and oppression. Surely these are good and worthy and Christian hopes.
But that isn’t Advent hoping.
So, if Advent isn’t about hoping for, then what is it?
Advent is about hoping in. Specifically, it is about hoping in the power of God and having the courage to trust that all things can be set right and that justice will prevail. This is why we hear Isaiah crying out, “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated… Here comes with power the Lord God, who rules by his strong arm; here is his reward with him, his recompense before him” (40:1-2, 10). Through Isaiah, God promises to act with and for his people. This passage, along with the other lections and prayers of the liturgies of Advent, reminds us that we can't save the world. Only God can bring justice to birth in individual hearts and minds. It is this birth for which we wait and pray during these Advent days.
An overview of the Readings for the Sundays of Advent (Cycle B) from Preaching the New Lectionary: Year B by Diane Bergan, CSA
From the First Reading of the First Sunday of Advent (a lament taken from Isaiah 63) we can see that our Advent journey is one of lament and longing, a cry for that life which only God can give. On this journey we will be sustained by the promises of the Prophets and the witness of the gospels, which remind us, day after day, that we place our hope in an extravagant, promise-keeping God who became flesh, shaking the world with an “end-time presence.” As Sister Diane Bergant has observed,
The mosaic of readings shows that Advent is a time centered on the working of God in the midst of human life. Both the misery of human existence and the limits of human power are acknowledged. In the contingencies of life an alternative message is heard: our loving and merciful God acts in the midst of the humbled yet hopeful people and draws possibility out of what is impossible.
As we enter into Advent and a new Church Year, we will find ourselves waiting in faith, hoping in the One who has the power and the love necessary to renew all of creation. To “prepare the way of the Lord” means living out the call to conversion and discipleship to which we recommit ourselves every time we attentively listen to God’s Word, celebrate the Eucharist, or mark ourselves with the Sign of the Cross. Because we're disciples we hope (and work!) for, but our hope must always be grounded in.
So, in the days to come, try to remember that this season isn’t about you or me or what we want…hope for… for ourselves, the Church, or the world. Rather, remember that this season is about what God wants for us—for all of us—and what God is bringing about in all of creation.
Stir up the will of your faithful, we pray, O Lord,
that striving more eagerly
to bring your divine work to fruitful completion
they may receive in greater measure
the healing remedies your kindness bestows.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Weekdays of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
