Advent

Perhaps no season of the Christian Year is as difficult to keep as Advent! Christmas parties start early in December, and it would be unsocial to decline invitations because we are observing Advent. Yet the cost of filling the season of waiting with celebrations is that we are tired of the season of Christmas by its second day, December 26th! We wear ourselves out with food and parties when the church calendar would have us fasting, and then feel the need to rest and fast soon after Christmas Day, when the church calendar would have us feasting. The Christian Year begins with four weeks of fasting, which prepares us for the twelve days of Christmas, and then simply returns to normal life, or Ordinary Time, afterwards.

The fast of Advent is not a deep or severe fast, though. It is not driven by penitence, but instead by patience, hope, and expectation. It is like waiting for a wedding banquet, which we would hardly prepare for by eating too much cheap food. Instead, we wait in modest fasting, with joy and expectation, because a feast is coming. The certainty of Christmas offers us the ability to wait in patience and hope.

But it is the return of Christ, not Christmas, that we are ultimately waiting for in Advent! The first coming is proof that the second will also arrive, and our joyful waiting for Christmas should prepare us for Christ’s return. More than anything, this is the season of the year when we should cultivate longing and hope for the second coming of Christ.

Prayer in Advent should be marked by this expectation. Every prayer should be grounded in the fact that Christ will come again and restore all things. Every reading should be considered from the standpoint, “What will this mean when Christ returns?” The season offers us a particular form of discipleship—discipleship in waiting. It should be the season where, even as we learn hopeful patience, our hearts fill with the prayer, “Lord, I long for your return! Please prepare me to celebrate your arrival!”

Steven+