The Secret Meaning of Advent

I want to talk about two things. First, the general sense that Advent is kind of a loss season. And second, that even for those for whom it’s not a loss season completely, we overlook an important dimension of advent that is important for making sense of what’s happening. Liturgically on the idea of advent being a loss season, I think this is pretty straightforward. Now, I don’t want to pick on them because as I was reading about them, I realized it was two high school students, but I was reading a debate in a Jesuit high school newspaper between two students about when the advent, excuse me, the Christmas season begins, and one side said after Halloween, and the other said December 1st. And now this is one of those times where though the church actually has a really clear answer to this. It’s December 25th. So like I said, my point here is not to bash a couple high school students for not knowing the ins and outs of the liturgical calendar.

My point here is rather to suggest that they’re totally normal, that ordinary people, ordinary Christians, ordinary Catholics don’t know when Christmas is, they’ll think of the Christmas season as right after Halloween for some reason, or at least right after Thanksgiving until December 25th. And that gets things completely backwards that properly, the Christmas season begins December 25th, and it’s actually harmful to get this wrong. Actually, one of the high school students recognized this. She pointed out that in a survey, 73% of Americans said they were annoyed by the early holiday shopping season. And she suggested that this contributes to this kind of burnout that we see where people are exhausted with Christmas by the time that it shows up. It turns out you don’t really want Christmas every day, and you certainly don’t want commercial, secular Christmas every day. The constant deluge of advertising and buying and everything else doesn’t actually make us happy.

This sort of spirit of secular materialism, it’s not a joyful time. It’s a fake, joyful time where you’re expected to feel all the time. And then the fact that you can’t because you’re human makes you feel worse. So one of the things that the church has actually said on this is that we need to reclaim Advent as a counterbalance to the commercialization of Christmas and consumer superficiality that you can’t, you can either have, if you want to put it this way, you can either have the Christmas of Jesus or the Christmas of Santa Claus. Now, I’m not saying you can’t play Santa, but I’m saying everything Santa represents in the modern context is antithetical to the Christian idea of Christmas. This just rampant consumerism and secularization of Christmas and all of this where it becomes commercial misses certainly the spirit of advent, and I would suggest the spirit of Christmas as well at a popular level, devotional practices, advent, wreaths and the like can be an important way of contributing to the conservation of what the church calls the values of advent.

Now, what are we talking about when we talk about the values of advent? So if we say, okay, we should intern to advent in some way, and advent is in some way a preparation for Christmas, great so far, but as I said, there’s a secret meaning of advent, meaning there’s a meaning. I don’t mean that it’s intentionally secret. I mean just something that even Catholics who know advent’s important, I never hear people talk about and I wish we would because it is really crucial for properly understanding why we celebrate advent in the first place. And it’s this apocalyptic dimension. So if you paid attention to the readings at mass, if you’ve got a bunch of small kids, I totally get it. But if you paid attention to the readings at mass, you may have noticed that this first Sunday of advent readings we’re in what’s called year sea of a three year cycle.

It’s from the gospel from Luke 21. And in there Jesus talks about how there will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars. And you might say, okay, is this the star of Bethlehem? Is this about Christmas? Then you keep reading or keep listening. And on earth nations will be in dismayed, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the wave people will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world for the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Okay, that doesn’t sound like Christmas. That sounds like something else. And then they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Okay, there, this is about the apocalypse, this is about the second coming. This is about Christ’s glorious return. And then at the end of the gospel, we’re given these instructions, be vigilant at all times and pray that you’ll have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the son of man.

So when we’re hearing this, our minds are not naturally drawn to Christmas. Our minds are naturally drawn to the second coming, and that is absolutely appropriate because that’s what it’s about. And he might say, okay, maybe one of the liturgists had too much to drink and he put the wrong reading in for the first Sunday of advent in year C. Well, no, because if you go back to year A, you’ll notice it’s Matthew 25 in Jesus comparison. Second, coming to the days of Noah where it catches everyone off guard. There are people eating and drinking up to the day that Noah entered the ark. So it’ll also be at the coming of the son of man. He doesn’t mean. So it also was back when I came at Christmas, he’s talking about his second coming and then in year B, the first sin of advent, the readings from Mark 13.

But of that day, an hour, no one knows neither the angels in heaven nor the son, but only the father. Be watchful, be alert. You do not know when the time will come again, the time for what? The time for the apocalypse, the time for the second coming. So why are we talking at the end of the world in Advent? Well, the church actually has spoken on this, although I think most people aren’t aware of it. There’s a document called the general Norms for the Liturgical year in the calendar, and it’s totally understandable if you said, I would rather die than read that. Fair enough. I’ll read part of it to you. Advent we’re told has a twofold character. The first sense of course is preparation for Christmas and Christ’s first coming, but the second is as a season when that remembrance, meaning remembering the events of that first advent direct our mind and heart to await Christ’s second coming at the end of time.

So if you think about it, the word advent is from Adventist coming. And so it refers to both Christ’s first advent when he came at Christmas and his second advent when he comes again in glory. Now, why are we connecting those two seemingly unrelated events in a single liturgical season? On the one hand, you might say, well, it’s really beautiful. It’s really fitting, right? If you think about the whole cycle of the year, the end of ordinary time ends with the feast we call Christ the kings, technically called the solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, king of the universe, amazing title. And the whole feast is celebrating the fact that Christ who reigns over everything will come in glory to establish his reign in this obvious way in his second coming. And so it’s kind of fitting that the end of the liturgical season then tees up the beginning of the next one.

I’m thinking almost like a clock where the 12 at the top represents both an end and a beginning, that there’s something kind of fitting about this moment, liturgically, but I think there’s something deeper to it. As I say, the word advent refers to the coming. Now, this is a prophesied coming. This is a prophesied advent, if you remember the first advent when Jesus comes at Christmas. This is something that was written about in the Old Testament. This is something that was prophesied about multiple times, and yet ordinary people were still caught off guard. People who should have known better, who should have been anxiously awaiting the Messiah in many cases. And so Christ comes into the world and the world is not ready for him. And we are warned, don’t let it happen again. You know he’s coming back. So be prepared. I skipped this line earlier, but from the first Sunday of Advent for this year, we’re reminded, beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness in the anxieties of daily life.

And that day catch you by surprise, like a trap for that day. We’ll assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. That’s what we’re warned about. That’s what we’re promised. That’s what we’re prophesied. Now, this is why I suggest the kind of Santa Claus, the approach to advent where you just replace all of that preparation with just carousing and drunkenness is antithetical. This is exactly what we’re not supposed to do. This is instead a different kind of liturgical season because something really important is happening. So how do we do that? Well, the directory on popular piety in the liturgy, another one of these documents nobody wants to read but actually has really interesting stuff in it tells us there’s three senses to what we’re supposed to be doing. That advent is a time of waiting, conversion and hope. But on waiting, it’s a twofold kind of waiting.

It’s what they call waiting memory of the first advent, the first coming of Christ, his first humble coming of the Lord, our mortal flesh. But it’s also a supplication waiting, this expectant waiting where we’re awaiting his final glorious coming as Lord of history and universal judge. So there’s this beautiful structure to advent where we take the themes of Christ, the King and say, look at how this is connected with the themes of Christmas. These two moments you didn’t think of as related are really the same kind of event. Christ showed up unexpectedly. He’s going to show up unexpectedly, and you need to expect the unexpected. You need to be prepared for that and waiting both, remembering that earlier waiting and preparing in your own life. Now, that’s the first of the three ways. The second is conversion. And we’re reminded if you pay attention to the readings, there are a lot of these calls for conversion.

So John the Baptist saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Listen, this advent for those themes, listen particularly next week for those themes because it’s about how the kingdom came first and the kingdom is coming again. So just as Christ came once at Christmas and will come again in glory, we can talk about the kingdom of heaven in the same way the kingdom of heaven is inaugurated on earth in a real way with the incarnation, but there’s a greater sense in which we can still pray. Thy kingdom come because the presence of the kingdom on earth is incomplete and conversion helps to prepare a place for the kingdom that we want to connect. Thy kingdom come to thy will be done. Where Christ is king, there is his kingdom. And so letting Christ be king of your life in a deeper way helps to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth.

It’s not just a waiting game. You can actually be doing something. You can actually be bringing Christ to earth in a deeper way through your own conversion. And the third element of the season is one that I think many people know, which is hope. This idea of joyful hope, because we’re not just waiting in terror. We have a very different kind of orientation. We’re waiting joyously. So think about the difference between the world and the church for a moment. One of those phrases when something is kind of bad but not as bad as it could be, people will say, oh, it’s not the end of the world. Because to the modern secular mind, the end of the world is the worst imaginable thing that could happen. But for a Christian, that’s not it at all. As we pray in the creed, we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

We are looking forward to what’s coming next. We’re grateful for the gift of this life, but we know this is nothing in comparison to the life to come. And so we want Christ to come. We want these total transformation and renewal of the heavens and the earth. This is something we’re excited about. It’s also something we need to be prepared for. If you can’t say, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, if you’re instead saying it’s not the end of the world, go back to step two, the conversion, right? You want to get in a place where you can enter in with joyful hope. And so we look forward to Christ coming at Christmas time, but we look forward even more to his coming in glory. And so as the director unpopular piety and the liturgy says, this is a season marked by joyful hope that the salvation already accomplished by Christ and the reality of grace in the world will mature and reach their fullness, thereby granting us what is promised by faith.

And we will become like him, for we shall see him as he really is. This is the thing I think we often don’t talk about. One of the reasons we’re excited about the second coming is there’s this promise that we’ll be transformed to be like Christ, that is better than any Christmas gift you could be hoping for. That’s better than any moment in this life. Even if it’s not a Christmas gift, even if it’s just the experience of being with loved ones or having time off work or whatever it is, those moments, as good as those can be, are just these very, very dim of the great glory God has in store. So we should be waiting for that. We should be converted to be prepared for that, and we should be expecting it with joyful hope, because we trust that the promises of Christ will come true. So that’s what Advent is about. It’s not just, okay, hold off on opening the presents a little longer. The problem when you prematurely intern to Christmas is you miss this beautiful short and really important eschatological season, meaning this season of preparation, not just for Christmas, but for the apocalypse, for Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.

Okay. Quick post script. There was no place for this organically in the episode, but this is kind of a game I play every year. I put together seven annual Catholic online advent fights, and actually only five of them are in Advent proper. You’ll see what I mean though. It’s this kind of broader season. The first one is always like Black Friday is materialistic. How dare you buy Christmas gifts on sale? The second one is in a lot of ways, what we just talked about today. It’s advent. It’s not Christmas yet. The third one, it is coming. Just wait. Is diehard a Christmas movie? Fourth, when we get to St. Nicholas Day, did St. Nicholas punch an Arian? Eh, fifth Mary, did you know? Sixth there rose, not pink. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen, you’ll hear it. And then seventh and finally, once we get to Christmas day, Christmas isn’t over yet. Now, in a lot of ways that is kind of the companion to the one we just talked about today. The problem with premature Christmas is that then when Christmas really arrives, everyone’s just so exhausted they don’t want to deal with it anymore. So listen for those fights and let me know in the comments if I missed any, are there any other online Catholic advent fights that we have every year and we should be kind of attuned to. Alright, thanks. God bless you. Have a wonderful advent.