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30 November 2009
Advent - Part One
What Goes Around,
Comes Around
“Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at wintertime, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent. If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time.”
Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac
When people look to writers of the Christian world, one of the most profound, yet overlooked, voices is the one of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. G.K. Chesterton offered some of the most practical advice for us. Chesterton lived “large” both literally and figuratively. With a frame of well over six feet tall and weighing more than 300 pounds, he lived to enjoy the finer things in life. He would often frequent his favorite pub for a sample from the many beers, wines and spirits as well as delighting in a fulfilling meal. Chesterton recognized the value of using the material items of this world to become closer to God and each other. He also knew that when we do not place the proper value on these things, it could be deadly. In an article he wrote for The Illustrated London News on Christmas Eve in 1927, Chesterton wrote:
“All ceremony depends on symbol; and all symbols have been vulgarized and made stale by the commercial conditions of our time.... Of all these faded and falsified symbols, the most melancholy example is the ancient symbol of the flame. In every civilized age and country, it has been a natural thing to talk of some great festival on which “the town was illuminated.” There is no meaning nowadays in saying that the town was illuminated.... The whole town is illuminated already, but not for noble things. It is illuminated solely to insist on the immense importance of trivial and material things, blazoned from motives entirely mercenary.... It has not destroyed the difference between light and darkness, but it has allowed the lesser light to put out the greater.... Our streets are in permanent dazzle, and our minds in a permanent darkness “the ritual of Christmas.”
Even in the early 20th century, Chesterton saw how people around him distorted Christmas. Towns went to great lengths to illuminate their streets and homes, yet they remained in darkness; people filled their plates, but their hunger lingered; they grew in wealth only to dwell in the poverty of the soul. Chesterton understood the persistent problem of the ages: humanity's lethal attraction to harmful materialism. Today, we can't seem to take our eyes off the television as it promotes the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. Society entices us with the newest cars, sleekest technology and trendiest clothing. Materialism and hedonism lure us away from worshiping our God, as we ought. They drag us into an arena where we will only find misery. Chesterton knew that many Christians had forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. “People are losing the power to enjoy Christmas through identifying it with enjoyment,” he stated in his essay “The New War on Christmas.’ We assume that society’s struggle with Christmas is a new one. However, even as Chesterton made these remarks in 1925, he was dealing with an old issue. If Chesterton lived today, he would have realized that in the midst of our baking, decorating, wrapping and partying, our need for an anchor during the turbulence of December still exists. That anchor is Christ. Without the intervention of Christ in our world, we remain desolate and hopeless. Advent is our chance to look forward to great possibilities. The theologian and spiritual writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this about Advent:
“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes...and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, it's not a bad picture of Advent.”
For Christians, Christmas would be incomplete without the preparatory season of Advent. In Latin, ad venio means “coming.” Each year, we spend the weeks before Christmas preparing the way for the Lord. As life becomes cluttered with the materialistic demands of society, Advent provides us with balance. God wants us to remember His Son, as our greatest gift. In 1986, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke about Advent's message of goodness:
“Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope.” (Seek That Which Is Above, 1986)
The Church calls us to cleanse our souls in order to make it a suitable home for the Redeemer of the world. Advent starts the Church year and for Christians it is a time of new beginnings. The emergence of Christ in our world changed everything. Sin and death have no power over humanity. The selflessness of God broke the momentum of our downward spiral away from Him. His presence in our world gives us great hope, a chance for everlasting happiness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the importance of the season:
“When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present the agent expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming.” (CCC 524)
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