Dear People of St. James’,
Let me tell you a little bit about Advent!
Advent is a four week period of preparation for the feast of Christmas. In the northern hemisphere, Advent is a time of shortening of days as darkness encroaches upon the daylight hours, and so the lighting of candles has traditionally been a sign of resistance to evil and the perseverance of life in the midst of death. Each week at the start of our liturgy, we light candles to mark the passing of time during this season of preparation and to remember the witness of those who proclaimed new life in the midst of death: the prophets (the first candle), the holy family (the second candle), the shepherds and angels (the third candle), and the magi (the fourth candle). At St. James’, we have been using this symbolism from the children’s Godly Play curriculum for the candles instead of the more abstract virtue-based symbolism (hope, peace, joy, and love), but I find you can think about it either way. For example, in the first week, one might reflect on how the witness of the prophets provides us with narratives that tell us about what it looks like to practice the virtue of hope. Regardless of how one thinks about the symbolism, the progressive lighting of candles anticipates the coming of the Light (Jesus) and points to our baptismal call to “receive the light of Christ and to be light in the world.”
Advent is also an eschatological season designed to point us beyond Christmas to the final coming of Christ – that is the triumph of justice, peace, and love in God’s new creation. At the heart of Christian expectation is an idea that God will heal what is broken, will wipe away the tears of those who mourn, and will do away with injustice to bring about real peace. The “how” and “when” of this is deeply mysterious, but the yearning for it in human hearts seems to transcend bounds of world religions and ideologies. In Advent, we are called to set this eschatological vision before us and to repent of the ways that we work against the triumph of justice, peace, and love in our own lives. In the gospel readings of Advent, John the Baptizer will appear to help us out with this with his demanding calls to repentance and rebirth, but we will also find Mary and Elizabeth doing something similar but in a less abrasive way. We will honor Mary’s particular witness alongside those in our Spanish-speaking community over the course of this season.
If you are curious about how Advent began, you should know that it was actually the last of the major feasts/fasts and seasons to emerge in the Church calendar. Sources from the fourth century including the Philocalian Chronograph indicate that Christmas itself was widely regarded as the beginning of the Christian year, but we begin to see evidence for pre-Epiphany 6-week fasts resembling Advent in Spain (Canons of Saragossa). The Western 4 week Advent was formalized under Pope Gregory in the late 6th century or early 7th.
At St. James’, the season of Advent is shaped by our yearly celebration of Founders Day on the second Sunday of Advent, by Marian celebrations inspired by our Spanish-speaking community, and by las Posadas – a powerful rite remembering the holy family’s difficult search for a place where the Christ-child might be born.
May your life be shaped and transformed by this season together over the coming weeks.
Rev. Eileen
