ADVENT OLD AND NEW

 

The restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic have been revealing some useful lessons. It's not surprising, then, that we can learn something from the way we have to celebrate the season of Advent 2020. 

We know that it was only in the Fourth Century that the Church decided to celebrate a feast in honor of Jesus' birth; and at first it was added as a not-so-important feast on the liturgical calendar. But soon the feast began to take on more and more prominence, and began to be celebrated with ever greater solemnity. One indication of its growing popularity is that as early as the Fourth Century the weeks before Christmas had become a time of joyful spiritual preparation, 

Imagine what that first Advent might have looked like in a typical town in Asia Minor, say, one week before Christmas. There were no street decorations, no hordes of shoppers crowding into stores, no Santas decorating windows, no cheerful Christmas trees, and no strings of lights twinkling on people's front lawns. Instead there would have been long winter nights, biting cold and, without electricity, lots of darkness, 

So what did those first Advent seasons look like? People must have made up practices as they went along. If you wanted to prepare yourself for Christmas you did so in your own home and in your heart. The Church and her liturgical celebrations would not be added to the Advent season until some time in the future.  

The celebration of Advent in 2020 is taking us back to the days of the first celebrations of Advent: Our  way of observing the pre-Christmas season will be closer to what our ancestors in the faith would recognize from the Fourth Century. The preparation will be centered in our homes and will concentrate much more on the internal life, on preparing our hearts to welcome Jesus. Even our churches will be of limited help -- just like in the earliest days.

This is good news and bad news.

For our sisters and brothers for whom the Christmas season is just about surface things like exchanging presents and going to office parties and listening to holiday tunes, this is bad news indeed, and the  few weeks leading up to December 25 promise to be a bleak bleak contrast to the usual "holiday season." Unfortunately, Advent 2020 will be bad news for restaurants and small businesses as well, and for families that are spread out geographically or who need to stay safely separate from one another.

But for Christians who choose to celebrate the Advent season, Advent 2020 is good news, because it offers us a unique opportunity that will probably never happen again: a chance to identify with our fellow Christians for those early centuries when Advent was mostly an interior event, a time to reflect quietly on the meaning of Christ's coming into our lives. What an opportunity! To be able to prepare to celebrate Christmas in an atmosphere stripped of the countless distractions of shopping and crowds and rounds of parties and so on, so we can concentrate on the coming of Christ into our hearts, our families, and our homes!

Speaking of homes... It was in homes, not churches that Advent was first celebrated. This year, Covid-19 is forcing us to celebrate in that way as well. It's up to you to accept the opportunity. Take the trouble to put up an Advent wreath, to do special family meal prayers for Advent, and put up special Advent decorations such as violet colors (not Christmas decorations yet, please!). Try not setting up the manger scene until Christmas Eve. Be sure to keep asking yourself, "What does this practice or symbol mean?" "Why are we doing this."

Let's celebrate this Advent in such a way that we can look back years from now and remember not only the bad news of the pandemic, but the very special Advent we spent preparing for the coming of Lord not as exhausted shoppers and partygoers, but as Fourth Century Christians, who celebrated Advenmt in their hearts in their families.