The Advent Season Is Here

Advent starts off the Christian year and offers all of us an invitation...

Happy New Year! I write these words during the first week of Advent, which kicks off another year in the life of the church. Another year we have to embrace and embody the story of Jesus through liturgical calendar and the traditions of the church. 

Read my intro to the liturgical calendar post on Substack 

The liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God. The liturgical year is an adventure in human growth, an exercise in spiritual ripening.

— Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life

This past Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. If you were expecting a slow, peaceful march to the birth of the baby Jesus, you might have been a little thrown off. What you got instead was apocalyptic imagery, warnings, and talk about the end of the world, not of a baby but of a returning king, this too is advent! We all know that “Christ will come again,” but we don’t intuitively connect the second coming with the first. Advent does. 

Advent encourages us to be formed by the ideas of waiting, preparing, and hoping, not just as we remember the birth of Jesus but also his eventual return. We are being formed into a people who wait not just to remember what he has done (Christmas) but for what we know he will do (come again). We are being formed to wait well! 

We are reminded during this liturgical season that all of life is an advent of sorts. We are always waiting, always preparing, always hoping. Most of us aren’t very good at these things, but life seems to give us a lot of practice. During Advent, we are invited to embrace the wait and be intentional about our true hope.

It’s easy to pick on the consumerism of the Christmas season or lament about Target putting out their Christmas decoration in October, I shed a tear every year, but it’s bigger than that and much closer to home. We are the ones prone to wander, tempted to run down the hall to Christmas morning. We want to skip ahead in the formative story the liturgical calendar and get to the exciting bits. But church, through her calendar is trying to lead us on journey into the story of Jesus, not just so we know it but so we can live it. This kind of pilgrmage can’t be sped up because every step along the path is meaning and makes a formative whole for those us who will embrace it. So we are invited to walk, not run, to the feast of the incarnation, the Christ-mas, our Christmas celebration.

Advent encourages us to have the same posture and pace as we wait for the return of our king, this glorious second coming we read about in our scripture. Embracing this season and it’s pace and promise might even give us practice to wait upon the Lord in all the moments of our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. Remember, all of life is an advent of sorts. 

I’ve been reading my friend Tish Warren’s book on Advent. She shares some beautiful reflections. Toward the beginning of her book, she hones in on these three advents that make up the season.

• The first advent, waiting for the birth of Jesus.

• The second advent, waiting for his return.

• Third advent, waiting on his coming, through the Spirit, in our everyday life. 

I have often talked about the double advent that enables the third. When we contemplate the first two advents through the liturgical season a way of being is formed in us that opens up our mind and imagination to the reality of advent, Jesus coming in our everyday life. The same is true of every liturigcal season, when we intentionally embrace the seasons and their stories we are being readied to live those stories in the way of Jesus.

Could the season of Advent teach us to wait so that when we find ourselves in situations where all we can do is wait and pray and hope that God will come to make things right we can do it? When all we can do is pray that he will come and stop the hurting, end of the war, cease the shooting, heal the depression, calm the axiety and lead us with his loving hand maybe we are alittle better formed to wait well and pray, with hope because we take this Advent jouney every year. Thes are season that teach us to live!

Advent is the season when we practice watching for grace. It is a time when we pay extra attention to how Christ continues to come, how he enters into the darkest corners of humanity and of our own lives. It is a time when we invite Christ to meet us and, in the words of Rich Mullins, to "shake us forward and shake us free.”
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We come to God openhanded, holding our imperfect and incomplete lives before him. We need him to come to us, to rescue and restore us, even today, in our everyday lives.

— Tish Harrison Warren, Advent: The Season of Hope

Let’s enter into this journey together and with those all around the world who are celebrating this Advent season. This journey of learning to wait, prepare, and hope should be done together. I pray this season will stir in you the desire to help the poor, give to those in need, contemplate your inner life of desire and distraction. We all need to learn to wait well, with eager and active expectation for Christ our King to come again and put things to right.

Let’s find some compasions for the journey and ket Advent encourage us to walk and not run and pray instead of purchase. 

I’ll be sharing more advent thoughts along the way. Together, let’s learn to wait patiently on the Lord this Advent season!