Dear Sisters, dear brethren, Advent is a season in need of rescue. Its very name is now only familiar to many through the modern ‘Advent Calendar’ with its daily treats: for the children a chocolate or a toy; or for the grown ups cosmetics or perfume, jewellery, even a small bottle of something alcoholic. The time formerly occupied by Advent in the wider world has been taken over by fairy lights and decorations, and by secular songs celebrating eating, drinking and partying to excess.
But the real Advent is now only a rarity, an endangered species, a season on life support, something quite different in character from the Christmas it looks forward to. That is a shame, because without entering into Advent we cannot really understand Christmas and even less successfully celebrate it. We live in a society which expects instant gratification. We don’t as a whole like to be kept waiting for something once we have a clear idea of what we want. The aim of modern advertising is to fill our minds with images that not only arouse our appetites, but actually try to convince us that without this product, or that kind of excessive consumption, we will fail to make ourselves happy but also, perhaps more insidiously, to make those around us happy, too. If we don’t have far more than enough to eat, we will leave everyone round our table feeling miserable at Christmas. Do you want to do that?
Even in many churches it is now fashionable to put up decorations long before Christmas and I have heard that in some churches, cribs are already fully on display, including the Christ child,! But this is surely to miss the point of Advent! This is a time to look forward not with impatience, but with a quiet watchfulness of spirit. Let me explain what I mean.
Isaiah, the prophet whose voice is heard so much in church during Advent, begins today’s first reading with these words: ‘the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and bloom like the crocus…’ Why does he speak of a wilderness, a desert, a land stricken by drought? These are not comfortable places in which to rest and take our ease. Nor are they meant to be! So what is this wilderness or desert? It is the state in which we find ourselves when we do not have what we want. It is uncomfortable to be without something we are longing for. As children we must all have known that sense of anticipation of some joyful event coming up and crying out impetuously, ‘I can’t wait!’ Well, Advent is a time in which we are given the opportunity to learn to wait – patiently. We already know that the name of Advent means ‘Coming’, but we don’t reflect that the word means that whatever is coming is by definition not already here. In this case the celebration of our Saviour’s birth is the coming into the world of the One God who created it, not coming as God in all His glory, but rather in humility as a man, human like us in every way except sin.
Well, maybe that makes us think of something else: not only must we learn to wait and to wait patiently, but we must recognise what it means to wait for God made man to come into us at the feast of His birth. We are waiting not just for the date which celebrates the anniversary in the past of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem, but for the realisation in the present of God’s plan for us. When Isaiah speaks of the dry land being glad, and the desert blossoming abundantly, and of its rejoicing with joy and singing, he is actually speaking about us. He is speaking about our hearts, about all that is central to our lives and existence. Think about it in this way: what is it that makes us rejoice? What makes us sad? One of those which can make us sad, or even angry, is not only not getting what we want straightaway but having to accept something else imposed on us instead. The desert within us is the state of having to accept that things are not as we would want or choose them, and having to learn to accept that or wait until the proper time.
Apart from Isaiah there is another great Scriptural voice that speaks to us today about this need to learn patience and acceptance: the Apostle St James. He begins today’s second reading with these words: ‘be patient…until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and late rains.’ We who are generally less familiar with the cultivation of the land than were many of the first Christians have to try and put ourselves into the mind of a farmer. The farmer has a lot of very hard work on his plate. He must till the land, which is heavy work guiding the plough, then he must sow the seed in the freshly tilled earth, having first made sure he has enough seed to sow. But after that it is largely a matter of waiting – of waiting for that over which he has no control: the rain. He has to hope that rain will fall both in sufficient quantities and at the proper time, which is, as James says, early enough to allow the seed to germinate, and late enough to bring the crop to ripeness and full yield.
Our Lord Himself often taught with images from farming and gardening and with the same intent: to teach us spiritual truths about ourselves that we might otherwise miss. Like the farmer in St James’s epistle, we need to see ourselves as being like soil which needs breaking up in order to receive water to make it fruitful. During a hot, dry summer, if rain falls on hard ground that is not broken up, it doesn’t soak into the ground at all, but simply runs off and causes flooding, and the ground remains dry and barren. So, like the farmer who must work hard to break up the ground to make it fruitful, we too must work hard to soften our inner selfishness so that we may receive the many graces that God wishes to pour out on us in such a way that they bear fruit in us.
This is what our Advent can be and must be. We must be like the farmer waiting patiently for the rain needed to make his hard work fruitful and bring his crops to full growth. But rather than the land, it is our souls that we must work on. We must break up the hardness of our selfishness and impatience. It is good for us to have to wait for gratification of our desires, to experience things that make us realise how impatient we can be, how determined we can be always to get our own way. Advent is a time to ask for patience in waiting, so that when He comes at Christmas, our Lord may find in us a spiritual soil made ready by our patient waiting during this precious Advent season to receive Him into ourselves far more fruitfully, far more joyfully, than if we have not made such preparations. It is a time to learn not to insist on having our own way, and even better still, to learn to rejoice when we don’t get our own way. That would indeed be a great victory!
Listen again to Isaiah: ‘Say to those who have an anxious heart, Be strong, fear not! And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Sion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads, they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.’ The sorrow and sighing are the uneasiness of impatience and self-will. Only when these are finally overcome can gladness and joy come in their place. That is what Christmas will bring to those who have first kept the self-discipline of Advent. In a similar way St James says: ‘Be patient until the coming of the Lord…establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another…’ He encourages us to avoid grumbling because this, together with self-assertion, brings only unhappiness and sorrow. Patience prepares us for true joy. And finally we can return to St Paul’s words which cry out in this Sunday’s entrance antiphon like a clarion call: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice! Indeed the Lord is near!’ This is the reason for our rejoicing: not that Christmas is already here, but that by our patience and forbearance we can prepare better for the One who is born at Christmas to be born in our hearts. We still await that birth, but we do so with joy. That is why we are not yet celebrating in white or gold vestments as we will do on Christmas Night, but today in Rose vestments because we are still in Advent, not quite in purple, but still waiting for the Lord’s birthday to come so that He may be born in our hearts made ready for Him.
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