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+
The Christian Year
It doesn’t require great insight to see that our world has no framework for how to think well about time. We all experience time, but we lack an overarching way of understanding how its seasons fit together and what it means. That God gave time to us on purpose and teaches us something through time might sound strange to modern ears!
We do have a progression of school years, and within them, the progression of material learned. We also have a series of purchasing days tied to certain festivals—Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas. But we have lost the sense that each season is connected both to the preceding one and the one that follows, and that together, the collection of seasons mean something.
Perhaps this loss results from the movement away from an agricultural world, where land was left fallow for a season before it was sown, and sowing necessarily preceded growing, which resulted in harvest. It is impossible on a farm to divorce one season from another, and each season on the farm contributes its own gift and preparation to the next. But our inability to see the connection between seasons is also the result of trading the church calendar for the economic calendar, where every season is supposed to be “harvest,” and none is “planting.” Try telling your boss you need a “fallow” season because you can start “planting” your work again (to be harvested after it has grown for a season), and you will discover how far removed the economic calendar is from the agricultural or church calendars!
The church calendar is not a series of discrete seasons, yet our discipleship under the tyranny of the economic calendar makes it initially difficult to see this. As the 2019 Book of Common Prayer says, “the Christian Year consists of two cycles” (687). In other words, we don’t have Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. Instead, we have the Incarnation Cycle, which consists of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. And we don’t have Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. Instead, we have the Paschal Cycle, which consists of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. In each of these cycles, the seasons are intricately connected to and dependent on one another, and in each, the pattern is the same—preparation, celebration, and growth.
The relationships between the seasons demonstrate something important, namely that mortification and repentance (preparation) must precede rejoicing (celebration), because they sow the seeds for it, and rejoicing is the foundation for discipleship and mission (growth), because we reap our harvest from the object of our rejoicing. We cannot divorce Lent from Easter, and we cannot divorce Easter from Pentecost. Each season prepares for the next, and trying to live the spiritual life in only one season is like trying to have only harvest without sowing. We need to be planted anew each year, and the Christian Year offers us the framework.
Steven+
Convocation and Synod Recap
Last week, a group from Incarnation attended the Diocese of Christ our Hope’s yearly convocation and synod. During convocation, we heard three talks and a panel discussion all focused on a Christian theology of human nature. While this might seem to be an obscure topic, it lies behind many of the most pressing issues of the day. Sexuality; gender and marriage; work and rest; mental health and education; entertainment and worship—there is a long list of current issues (in both the culture and the church) that can only be discussed well if we first understand what it means to be human. We must lay the foundation before we can build the first and second floor! To begin this conversation in our diocese, Dr. Marc Cortez gave two lectures (lecture one begins at the 1:29:00 mark and lecture two begins at the 1:17:00) on what is means that we were created in the image of God, and Dr. Julie Canlis gave a lecture on how incorporation into Christ through baptism creates a new nature in us. Her lecture is divided into two parts (part one begins at 2:33:00 and part two). All three talks were excellent and are worth your time! There was a panel discussion that discussed these topics further (part one and part two).
On Friday evening, Alan Hawkins was consecrated Bishop Coadjutor of the diocese (watch here). The service was beautiful and a time of deep rejoicing in the presence of the Lord. And on Saturday morning, we heard reports about the state of the diocese and accomplished some of the yearly business of the diocese.
Over the course of this year, there will be several opportunities to learn more about how a good theology of humanity changes our understanding of particular issues. Starting in January there will be an opportunity every other month, and the topics addressed will include gender, mortality, race, mental health, and vocation. Stay tuned for more information about how to participate in these discussions!