Advent

12-02-2018Weekly Reflection

Occasionally, someone raises a surprised complaint that while Christmas arrives on Santa’s sleigh at the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving Day, the Church doesn’t catch on too fast. They may even say that Advent is a new fangled idea. Not so.

To trace its beginnings, we have to go back to the fourth or fifth century in France (then Gaul), when Epiphany was the favored day, next to Easter, forbaptism. The old pagan structures of Rome were collapsing then, and many people sought to be baptized. Since adults always prepared for baptism by fasting, folks counted back a few weeks for a kind of retreat. Before too long, bishops were advising everyone to attend church frequently beginning on December 17. Soon, artists were imagining ways of expressing the Advent mystery, and in Italy this gave rise to beautiful mosaics of empty thrones awaiting the arrival of the Lord of all creation.

Advent as we know it develops on two separate tracks: the first having to do with our spiritual preparation for celebrating the Christmas feast, andthe second having to do with the way this is organized and expressed in the liturgical readings and prayers every day of the season.