Author: CCW

“The Lord is at hand”

Advent is the season of watching and waiting. So we have been saying, over and over again, it seems. Yet it needs to be said and it needs to be heard. There are always four Sundays of Advent that bring us to Christmas but there are not always four full weeks of Advent. This year the Advent season is as long as it can possibly be because Christmas falls on a Sunday. We get the full benefit of the Advent season, if we will take advantage of this time of watching and waiting. We need it for it is the counter to what I sometimes call the ‘frenectitude’, if I may coin a term, for this frantic and frenetic time. Our busyness becomes a kind of mindless madness. I speak, I am afraid to say, from personal experience!

We need the quiet darkness of Advent, especially in a culture of fearful anxiety. “In nothing be anxious,” Paul tells us this morning, literally “be not careful” in its older translation by William Tyndale, meaning be not so full of cares and worries. “Rejoice in the Lord,” Paul says. And, then, speaking to a culture of excess, he says, “let your moderation be known unto all men.” Moderation. And what is the antidote to our frantic frenetic busyness? Prayer. “Prayer and supplication with thanksgiving,” he says. And prayer in its most basic sense is all about asking. And asking is all about questions. And Advent is all about the questions; questions that catapult us into the presence of the one who comes. They are intrinsic to the watching and waiting. They are our watching and waiting. Advent is the season of questions.

What is our watching and waiting? It is our watching and waiting expectantly, our watching and waiting in hope, our looking and longing for something more and better, for some greater good, for blessedness. Advent is, in every way, the season of hope.

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“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches”

Two figures dominate the spiritual landscape of Advent. They are John the Baptist and Mary, the Mother of our Lord. Together they illuminate something of the meaning of Advent for us. The one points to Christ; the other carries the hope of the world in her womb. Nothing can come to birth in us unless their complementary yet contrasting attitudes to Christ are realised in our lives.

John the Baptist calls us to repentance. He calls us to a fundamental change of outlook, a new orientation, a constant metanoia, which is nothing less than a radical transformation of attitude requiring renunciation and repudiation; in short, a resolute ‘no’ to the world.  Mary calls us to a willing acceptance of the one who comes. “Be it unto me according to thy Word.” Her ‘yes’ to God embodies the very nature of faith itself.

The Word made flesh comes to birth through her because that Word now fully defines her being. It marks an ever deepening understanding of the Mystery to which she so completely gives herself. It is borne out of her faithful hearing, her constant attentiveness to the Word and Son of God.

These two figures recall us to the profounder principles of our spiritual identity. They challenge us about our engagement with the world, to be sure, but without being taken captive by either the rhetoric of an idealised future or the rhetoric of an idealised past. They recall us to God in the motions of his love towards us. Let him who has an ear “hear what the Spirit says to the Churches.” In a way, as Augustine remarks somewhere, “the Scriptures are like letters from home,” perhaps, even emails, we might say; they remind us of who we are essentially and spiritually.

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“Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see.”

Two figures dominate the spiritual landscape of Advent. They are John the Baptist and Mary, the Mother of our Lord. Together they illuminate something of the meaning of Advent for us. The one points to Christ; the other carries the hope of the world in her womb. Nothing can come to birth in us unless their complementary yet contrasting attitudes to Christ are realised in our lives.

&John the Baptist calls us to repentance. His cry is the mantra of Advent: “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He calls us to a fundamental change of outlook, a new orientation, a constant metanoia, which is nothing less than a radical transformation of attitude requiring renunciation and repudiation; in short, a resolute ‘no’ to the world.  Mary calls us to a willing acceptance of the one who comes. “Be it unto me according to thy Word.” Her ‘yes’ to God embodies the very nature of faith itself.

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