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First Sunday of Advent: Patient Restraint & the Expectant Mary
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December 4, 2018This weekend we begin a new liturgical year, as we are celebrating the First Sunday of Advent. To me, Advent is probably the most misunderstood of the liturgical seasons. We kinda don’t understand it, and so we don’t celebrate it well. But the better we understand Advent, the better we spiritually enter into the season, and we have a better Christmas.
To start off, Advent is a preparatory season, similar to Lent. As Lent prepares us for Easter, Advent prepares us for Christmas. There are other similarities between Lent and Advent. Both are marked with the color purple (By the way, I love Advent and Lent because I get to wear purple and gold). Both are also penitential seasons. We tend to focus on undertaking penances during Lent, but we can do the same during Advent. In the spiritual tradition, preparation and penance go hand-in-hand, which is why we are having a penance service here on December 13th. It is no accident that the color purple is worn both during Advent and in the Confessional. The Church uses the color purple to communicate penance to us.
So Advent is a penitential season. What else is going on during the Advent Season? During Advent the Church is summarizing the period of the Israelites before the arrival of the Messiah. Essentially, the Old Testament is wrapped up in four short weeks. The hundreds of years the Israelites waited for the promised Messiah is spiritually entered into in four short weeks. This is why the messianic prophecies of the prophets, in particular, are emphasized in the readings for Mass. For instance our First Reading from the Prophet Jeremiah we see a prophecy about the coming Messiah, that he will come from the royal House of David. He says that a shoot will spring from David. This is also very similar to a prophecy from the Prophet Isaiah who says that a bud shall blossom from the stump of Jesse. (For those keeping score at home Jesse is the father of David.) This is an important messianic prophecy, and one that is popular during Advent. So in Advent we spiritually place ourselves in the shoes of the Israelites, who patiently waited and prayed for the coming of the Messiah.
And here is why I think that it is difficult for us to enter into the Advent Season. It’s because we know the Messiah has come. This December 25th will be Jesus’ 2018th birthday. And so because we know that He has come already, we anticipate Christmas way too early. We begin playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving, and decorate our homes with Christmas decorations in early December. We also go to a few Christmas parties before Dec. 25th. We anticipate the celebration of Jesus’ Nativity well before the day arrives, and by the time Christmas comes, we’re done with celebrating it. We put our trees out front a couple of days after and stop playing Christmas music. Isn’t it ironic that Christmas music hardly gets played during the Christmas Season? (Christmas Season lasts like 2 1/2 weeks by the way, and is longer than 12 days.)
What is needed during Advent is restraint and patience. In order to have a joyful Christmas we need to have a good Advent, and resist the temptations of letting Christmas spill over into Advent. And what helps us to practice this patient restraint is by taking our Gospel to heart. Our Lord tells us to be watchful and to pray. Increasing our prayer during Advent helps us to enter into the spirit of the Advent Season, especially praying as a family. A simple way of doing this is by having an Advent Wreath in our home and actually using it, instead of keeping it as a center piece on the dining room table. There are short prayers that can be said together as a family everyday around the Advent Wreath, as the appropriate candles are lit.
Another lesser known practice is the Jesse Tree. This helps us to become more acquainted with the prophecies of Jesus’ birth, as everyday a short scripture from the prophets is read, and an appropriate ornament is hung on a bare tree.
We could also listen to Advent music as an alternative to playing Christmas music during Advent. “O Come O Come Immanuel” is probably the most popular and most well known, and one of my favorite Advent songs. If we take the time to let the melody and the lyrics of this song to penetrate us, we get a taste of what it meant to be an Israelite before Jesus’ birth. The yearning in that song, and the cry of desperation that it evokes, should soften our hearts and encourage us to yearn more for Christ. Advent can increase our love and desire for Christ if we let it sink in.
One last thing about Advent. In my opinion, it is the most Marian of the seasons. There is a particular Marian character to Advent that is not present in the other seasons. For multiple reasons, I think the best image during Advent is the expectant Mary. We see Mary patiently awaiting the imminent birth of her son. She was prayerful, watchful, and attentive. I’m sure there were also stressful moments during her pregnancy. The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem must have been particularly trying on her. What mother wants to travel around 80 miles in the last days of her pregnancy? This is how we should be spiritually during Advent. She was prayerful and vigilant during this period, just like we should be. She also didn’t celebrate the birth of her son before He arrived, and neither should we.
So let us practice patience and restraint during this Advent Season by being prayerful and watchful, just like Our Lady was while she was carrying Jesus in her womb. May we spiritually prepare our hearts this Advent by receiving our Lord’s sacramental mercy in Confession. One of the messages of Advent is preparing room for Christ to come to us. Going to Confession creates that necessary room for Jesus to come to us by wiping away everything that is not of Him. Let us also commit to praying a little more each day this Advent, both personally and as a family. This prayer can increase our desire for Our Lord, it can create room in our hearts for His coming, and can lead to us experiencing a deeper, spiritual joy this Christmas.
