The past, present, and future of Advent

For some Christians, Advent is simply an aid to memory. It is certainly that. It is also much more. For Advent is a season not only of remembering what happened long ago in order to prepare ourselves for the liturgical celebration of Christ’s Nativity, of preparing ourselves to receive Him in our hearts in the sacraments and in prayer, and of preparing ourselves to receive him when He comes again to judge the living and the dead. Advent is about past, present, and future.

We do tend to focus on the first one. For it is not only necessary but delightful to remember how it was that God fulfilled His promises. How wonderful to think back on the prophecies from Isaiah and the other prophets of a light in darkness, a wonderful counselor, a prince of peace! How wonderful to recount the period of waiting for that long-promised deliverer of Israel! How marvelous to recount the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus’ forerunner and cousin, John the Baptist! Much more so that of the Lord Himself! In the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, the account of the Annunciation is read at the Gospel on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Friday in the Third Week of Advent. The account of the Visitation is read on December 21. Following the regular pattern of Catholic liturgy in which we anticipate early what we are to celebrate on the major feast, we will hear the shorter account of Christmas given in Matthew on December 18.

To remember all these things and to ponder them in our hearts is in and of itself a great gift. It is good to remember what the Lord has done in our own past and in the past of all our race. In my childhood, all of the Christians in my hometown gathered together to put on what was called the Holy Walk, in which groups of people would walk a trail on a local farm (it’s now located in an area park) until they arrived at Bethlehem. They encountered friendly and brutal Roman soldiers, grimy yet humble shepherds, and other pilgrims. The pilgrims ended their journey at the manger and then in a field hearing the choirs of angels.

Though it was run by Protestants for the most part, the Bremen Holy Walk was (and no doubt still is) a remarkable experience for all who wanted to use their imagination in the way St. Ignatius encouraged. We put ourselves in the biblical scene, imagining what we would think, feel, and do if we were Mary or Joseph or a shepherd. We experienced the roughness of the Roman soldiers and imagined what it must have been like to be a conquered people to whom a kingdom had been promised. It was an ideal way to prepare for hearing the words of the full Christmas story on the day itself and realizing what that event must have meant. A way to celebrate the birthday of the God Who loved us so much that He became one of us.

Yet that Holy Walk, like all such Advent traditions that have grown up among Christians, was always a moving experience because the reflection on what we would have done, had we been in the shoes of those who were there at the time, led most of us to begin thinking about the second aspect of Advent preparation: what we ought to be doing now to welcome Christ in our hearts. My Protestant friends believed that nourishing the memory of the coming of Christ into this world as an infant had as its goal preparing minds and hearts to receive His gift of grace. They wanted the walkers to be ready to hear the voice of Jesus calling them to accept His Lordship in their lives.

They were not wrong.

And yet, for Catholics, there is certainly more. We who have been baptized into Christ are now capable of receiving His presence in the fullest way possible in the Holy Eucharist. Though Advent is a hopeful and cheerful time in the Church’s calendar, it is also a time of preparation and penance. It is a time to confess our sins, to give up the good things that are gifts so that we can welcome the true Gift who comes to us not only at Christmas but at every moment and, in the most remarkable way, in the Mass. It is a time to exercise faith, which is assured of the realities that go beyond sight. “We may wish to have been at Bethlehem to receive Him,” writes Blessed Columba Marmion. “Yet He is here giving Himself to us in Holy Communion with as much reality although our senses are less able to find Him.”

To find Christ in the here and now, especially to find Him where He has promised to be—body, blood, soul, and divinity given to us for our very nourishment and life—is the task of all of our lives. It is what we ought to think of when people talk about the spirit of Christmas throughout the year. And we seek out the Lord who has come to us because He has not just come to us to be with us in our sins and misery; He has come to us to lead us home to the Father. This leads us to the future aspect of Advent.

We prepare ourselves to celebrate the Advent of the Son as one of us; we prepare ourselves to celebrate and receive the Son as He comes to us by His Spirit, especially in the sacrament of the Eucharist; and we prepare ourselves to celebrate and receive Him when He comes again at the end of time to hand over all things to His Father.

Even as the Gospels of Advent help us remember the preparation for that first coming in poverty and humility, so do the prophetic readings prepare us for that second coming in glory. On December 1, the reading from Isaiah 2 tells us that at this coming: “He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.”

Will we be ready for the celebration of Christ’s first coming in a few weeks? Only if we are making ourselves ready for His continual coming down upon the altar and on the altar of our lives. If we are doing that, we will be ready for His coming at the end as the mighty judge of final justice and peace.

(Editor’s note: Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Servant.)