The Church year is celebrated with different seasons:
Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. This weekend, we
begin the Season of Advent: four weeks before Christmas. The two seasons are
related but distinct.
Advent is NOT Christmas; Advent is the beginning of the
Church year because it celebrates the beginning of our Church life – the time
when Jesus is expected, in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Advent prepares us for
Christmas. While Christmas commemorates Christ’s physical entrance into
our world, Advent gets us ready for both the physical and spiritual presence of
the Son of God with us, “Emmanuel.” Advent is a season of hope-filled
waiting and expectation, a holy season. These four weeks are an
invitation to pause in our busy lives and pray.
During Advent, we speak of the comings of Christ: into
history (expectation of birth); in mystery of everyday, in one another; and in
majesty, at the end of time, our final judgment and reunion with God.
Advent is a time to get our homes/hearts ready. That is why the scripture
readings of the season set a tone of anticipation.
This weekend, for example, we hear from the prophet
Jeremiah, hundreds of years before Christ’s birth:
The
days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise
I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
In those days, in that time,
I will raise up for David a just shoot;
he shall do what is right and just in the land.
We also hear from St. Paul in his first Letter to the
Thessalonians:
Strengthen
your hearts,
to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father
at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen.
We finally hear from St. Luke’s Gospel:
Be
vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength
to escape the tribulations that are imminent
and to stand before the Son of Man.
Advent is a special time and a special season for us, as
Christians, to do what is right as we wait for the Lord Jesus in all his
comings. Together, then, let us use these four weeks not just to focus on
all the trappings that Christmas holidays put before us by the world, but on
Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, the Messiah, Emmanuel, who comes in human
flesh to draw us to himself.