The Error of Anticipating

     We are in the midst of the season of Advent, the beginning of our liturgical year. There is so much to celebrate in Advent with its two-fold theology of our spiritual preparation for Christmas and our looking for Christ to come again.

Anticipating vs. Participating

     We are as bad as any shopping mall when it comes to celebrating Advent. Sure, we celebrate it on the four Sundays prior to Christmas, but other than those four hours we bow to the temptation of anticipating the season in unspiritual ways. Case in point: How many parishes have “Christmas” concerts in the weeks leading up to Christmas? These are concerts full of Christmas carols and imagery. Why? When we as Catholics lament that the rest of the world ends the Christmas season the very night it actually begins, we are behaving no better. Christmas begins with Evening Prayer I on Christmas Eve and ends with Evening Prayer II on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, this year January 11, 2015. We have 2-1/2 weeks to celebrate the season!

     Let me not be coy here. In full disclosure, I myself have participated in Adventide Christmas concerts. It’s just the way it is. But we must start moving toward a more meaningful experience of Advent, rather than trampling it to get to Christmas.

     Why don’t we anticipate Lent? Certainly we’re not singing These Forty Days of Lent during Ordinary Time the way we’re singing The Twelve Days of Christmas during Advent. We certainly don’t anticipate Easter during Lent, thankfully. Granted, the emotion attached to Christmas is higher than that to Easter, but is that really the way it ought to be? Are we Christmas people or Easter people?

     Our God lives in Advent. Advent is that joyful expectation with which we look forward to our final and everlasting union with God. Our God, who is head-over-heels crazy in love with us, can’t wait to meet each of us face to face and live with us forever. This is God’s sense of anticipation. And yet, God lives in joy, looking forward to that meeting face to face. We are called to live the same way.
     Advent bids us to start the new liturgical year by cleaning out the clutter in our lives, getting rid of anything that is not of God, so that our hearts may be purified as we await Christ’s return, for we know not when he will come. It is into the quiet of our hearts that we find the coming Christ, and we cannot make room for him if we distract ourselves by anticipating Christmas instead.

     The Incarnation is to be loved, cherished and celebrated in its fullness. But the Incarnation is only one necessary part of God’s salvific action, an action that continues to and through this very moment. With the Incarnation God enters into human history, to live in time and space with us, to fully experience all that we experience. In Advent the world is pregnant with anticipation of meeting Christ again when he comes to call God’s children back home. Let us not lose sight of the richness of this season.

If Not Now, When?

A practical note for those in ministry: The traditional music celebration for Advent is Lessons & Carols, a service of Scripture readings and appropriate music. Why not begin the Advent season with this celebration at evening twilight the first Sunday of Advent? The best time to celebrate a Christmas concert is on the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord, this year January 4, 2015. It is a way of continuing the celebration of the season in an authentic way, and also of elevating the Epiphany to the solemnity that is its due. Then, let the Christmas carols flow with great joy, as we celebrate the great gift of Christ’s birth, the beginning of the greatest chapter in God’s gift of salvation.