A Sunday Thought: This Year Advent Will Be Unlike Any Before It
Advent begins today. It will be an Advent unlike any before it for our family. But, still, it remains a holy season.
We Catholics cherish our holy seasons. Among them: Lent, Easter, Christmas and, now, Advent. While it's important for us to keep each of these seasons in an appropriate manner, it's especially true when it comes to Advent. In our world, the spirit of Advent can easily be overwhelmed by the "holiday season" mish-mash that grows around us day by day.
It begins with the "holiday music" radio stations, extends to the constant calls for us to shop early, shop often, shop late, shop often...etc. Some commercial establishments begin decorating right after Halloween. Most people have their decorations, even their Christmas trees, up by Thanksgiving or shortly thereafter. The "holidays" are pretty much crammed into our senses from the end of November until Christmas Day. Then it all begins to unravel - just as the Christmas Season itself has just begun.
If you're thinking this Pre-Christmas glut is a recent development, foisted on us by an increasingly secular world that persistently attempts to mute our religious sensibility, think again. G.K. Chesterton wrote many essays, newspaper articles and poems about Christmas. Some of these described London in the weeks before Christmas. Here's one quick selection:
The Christmas season is domestic; and for that reason most people now prepare for it by struggling into tramcars, standing in queues, rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into tea-shops, and wondering when or whether they will ever get home. I do not know whether some of them disappear for ever in the toy department or simply lie down and die in the tea-rooms; but by the look of them, it is quite likely. Just before the great festival of the home the whole population seems to have become homeless.
Other times Chesterton bewails the focus on pure sensual enjoyment and celebration - specifically when that celebration ignores the Person who's birth we celebrate each year.
So what will you do with your Advent this year? Will it contain a penitential element, extra time devoted to spiritual reading, a good Confession (especially if you haven't been for a while), some degree of delayed gratification that allows you to "save yourself" for the true joy that comes with the celebration of the Birth of Jesus Christ?
The point is: Advent is our season to prepare for the celebration of the Birth of Our Lord. That's not to say we run and hide from the world and its blizzard of "holiday" activity. But some selectivity and temperance will create the spiritual space we need to keep our hearts and minds open to the coming of the Lord.
Oh, right, I did mention this will be an Advent unlike any before it for our family. What's up with that? Well, December 15th, just about the middle of Advent, will be the one-year anniversary of the massive stroke that 18 days later resulted in the death of our oldest child. At the age of 38, our son left a wife and daughter to carry on without him, along with his parents, his four brothers, never mind his many friends and colleagues. While the entire year has been a difficult one for all of us, things will likely be even more so in the coming weeks. In your charity, please pray for his widow and his dear daughter who lost her Daddy when she was a tiny toddler.
While we historically didn't put up our Christmas tree until after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, at this point a part of me doesn't want to even think about the tree and our other decorations. Maybe that will change; we'll have to see how things progress.
One thing I'm certain of: As opposed to Advents past, where the challenge had been to temper and delay the all-out celebrations that surrounded me, this year will be the opposite. At some point, we'll have to decide just when and how much we can bring ourselves to engage with even the true, legitimate joys of Christmas despite our ongoing grief.
Maybe a good place to start is with the wonderful Christmas aspiration we pray each Advent, and with which we traditionally end all our Advent posts:
We Catholics cherish our holy seasons. Among them: Lent, Easter, Christmas and, now, Advent. While it's important for us to keep each of these seasons in an appropriate manner, it's especially true when it comes to Advent. In our world, the spirit of Advent can easily be overwhelmed by the "holiday season" mish-mash that grows around us day by day.
It begins with the "holiday music" radio stations, extends to the constant calls for us to shop early, shop often, shop late, shop often...etc. Some commercial establishments begin decorating right after Halloween. Most people have their decorations, even their Christmas trees, up by Thanksgiving or shortly thereafter. The "holidays" are pretty much crammed into our senses from the end of November until Christmas Day. Then it all begins to unravel - just as the Christmas Season itself has just begun.
If you're thinking this Pre-Christmas glut is a recent development, foisted on us by an increasingly secular world that persistently attempts to mute our religious sensibility, think again. G.K. Chesterton wrote many essays, newspaper articles and poems about Christmas. Some of these described London in the weeks before Christmas. Here's one quick selection:
The Christmas season is domestic; and for that reason most people now prepare for it by struggling into tramcars, standing in queues, rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into tea-shops, and wondering when or whether they will ever get home. I do not know whether some of them disappear for ever in the toy department or simply lie down and die in the tea-rooms; but by the look of them, it is quite likely. Just before the great festival of the home the whole population seems to have become homeless.
Other times Chesterton bewails the focus on pure sensual enjoyment and celebration - specifically when that celebration ignores the Person who's birth we celebrate each year.
So what will you do with your Advent this year? Will it contain a penitential element, extra time devoted to spiritual reading, a good Confession (especially if you haven't been for a while), some degree of delayed gratification that allows you to "save yourself" for the true joy that comes with the celebration of the Birth of Jesus Christ?
The point is: Advent is our season to prepare for the celebration of the Birth of Our Lord. That's not to say we run and hide from the world and its blizzard of "holiday" activity. But some selectivity and temperance will create the spiritual space we need to keep our hearts and minds open to the coming of the Lord.
Oh, right, I did mention this will be an Advent unlike any before it for our family. What's up with that? Well, December 15th, just about the middle of Advent, will be the one-year anniversary of the massive stroke that 18 days later resulted in the death of our oldest child. At the age of 38, our son left a wife and daughter to carry on without him, along with his parents, his four brothers, never mind his many friends and colleagues. While the entire year has been a difficult one for all of us, things will likely be even more so in the coming weeks. In your charity, please pray for his widow and his dear daughter who lost her Daddy when she was a tiny toddler.
While we historically didn't put up our Christmas tree until after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, at this point a part of me doesn't want to even think about the tree and our other decorations. Maybe that will change; we'll have to see how things progress.
One thing I'm certain of: As opposed to Advents past, where the challenge had been to temper and delay the all-out celebrations that surrounded me, this year will be the opposite. At some point, we'll have to decide just when and how much we can bring ourselves to engage with even the true, legitimate joys of Christmas despite our ongoing grief.
Maybe a good place to start is with the wonderful Christmas aspiration we pray each Advent, and with which we traditionally end all our Advent posts:
Divine Infant of Bethlehem,
Come and take birth in our hearts!
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