Advent: The Season to Change the World

“Advent is the season of the seed… Advent is the season of the secret…” (The Reed of God, Caryll Houselander 27-28).

Advent is a time of preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ. Jesus “arrives,” “comes,” (advenire) unto us in the flesh, born of the Virgin Mary of Nazareth. The Church’s season of Advent awaits this birth. We celebrate this coming, this sowing of the word, of the seed of God. This is the seed that has been sown in secret before the dawn of our creation. That God would come to us as “Emmanuel” –as one who is “with us”—in Christ, in the flesh, as man, truly a “God who is with us” (Matthew 1:22-23).

This Advent season I have been struck by the constant reminder of what this season is… that it is a time where seeds are sown. This is a time where secrets are made manifest. This is a time of waiting, a time of longing, a time of not only trimming a tree but moreover trimming the grist and grime that surrounds my interior life—my heart, the core and seat of my being. This has been the hardest challenge for me this Advent season. Interior re-decorating is not easy! And boy is it time-consuming…

In order to truly welcome the Christ child, I must “prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight His paths…” (Luke 3:4-5). These words of St. John the Baptist barely sink beneath the surface for me—growing up, they merely served as an Advent refrain that indicated we were coming close to Christmas. Therefore, I needed to repent of our bad actions, of my sinful inclinations. Penance service here I come! But I always looked outside of myself in response to these words: God is inviting me to take one less helping at lunch or to spend an extra fifteen minutes in prayer. The valleys of my depravity, of my emptiness, would be filled, and the mountains of my excess, my pride would be toppled! This is quite lovely since it is quite manageable. Change my actions? Of course! I can do that… but change my disposition? My heart? My interior life? My motivations?

As much as this exterior change can be and often is necessary, God’s Advent invitation for me then—and still, now—is much greater! Advent is not a season of expanding our spiritual repertoire or our list of intercessions; Advent is a season of an expansion of our hearts. Christ must be King of my Heart—and He is a King who does not command me to worship Him as a slave does his master. Christ is a King who invites me to share in His royalty, in His Beloved dignity as a fellow child of God…God’s surprise for me this Advent, each Christmas is that I have a brother, and His name is Jesus. God’s surprise for me this Advent is that I have a companion who dwells not merely in nice sentiments or Christmas cards, and certainly not in my own psychological or philosophical musings, but in the depth of my being. That Christ comes to dwell in me…

A Season For Home

Advent is a season for homecomings… this makes sense to me here in the postulancy as I prepare to go home for Christmas. Advent is a season where we are invited to travel home. Often, on old pieces of wood that might decorate our grandparent’s living room, we might read a “Home is where the heart is.” As cliché as this may seem, the premise is quite true. Home is where the heart is found because home is where the heart is grounded, founded, fostered and fed. It follows too, then, that home may also be the same space where our hearts are hurt, humiliated, or harangued. But Advent invites us to go home, to return to our roots—no, but to go even deeper, as far as pondering the seeds that first fell upon the soil of my being and made me, me!

Advent is a time for the home and the hearth; for the home that cultivates a hearth, a fireplace of Love. The Trinitarian life of God in us—the very movement of the Holy Spirit which, by which we are baptized and initiated into this Christian life, marks and manifests as this flame of divine life, light, and love. Advent is a time for wreaths to be lit since it is a season for our darkness to be cast out, too! For Christ, the light of the world has come…

Advent is a season for the secret seed of our identity as created beings, founded and folded in the womb of Mary, held in the mysterious being and all-consuming presence of Christ, to take flesh, to become real. Since we are the Body of Christ as Church, as Christians, Advent is the season of our birth. And if Advent is the season of our birth, for we who are born—this then must be a season for our spiritual rebirth! Our God reveals Himself as Father during this Advent season; we must make our homecoming into the dark crevices of our family crèche in order to see the gentle, loving, yet sweeping hand of a God who has fathered and mothered us in the midst of our faulty and fabulous foundations.

Advent is a season where we must tend the heart, the heart which is the hearth—the very fireplace of our love, of our essence. Our being—the fullness of who I am—is brought to life in the mystery of the incarnation this Advent.

A Season to Change the World 

Advent is a season where Christians must profess that we can change the world. Not because of who we are—never!—but because of who He is, and who we are enabled to be together, with God! No amount of external work, of exterior conversation, will necessitate the interior conversion and conversation that God asks of each of us this Advent season. “Only what comes out of your heart, your very entrails, so to speak, can change it [the world]” (Urodovi, Catherine Doherty).

And what comes out of our heart must be Christ; the Word must radiate from our lives. In our words, in our actions, in our relationships… We decide what, whom, we allow to enter into our hearts. It is no different when it comes to our faith in God. We are given an open invitation to welcome the Messiah, the silent, unspoken yet entirely pronounced Word into our hearts. We, like Mary, can come to share in the great yes, the great “fiat” of surrender in and through faith.

If Advent is the season of the Son, the Son of God, it is also the season of the Mother, the Mother of God. Mary is the model of Christian discipleship. She is both Church and Christ-bearer. In so far as we come to journey with Mary during this Advent season, we come to allow the mystery and the reality of the secret seed of God to take flesh in our world. God continues to manifest Himself to us through Mary, to us through the Church, through Mary’s life and example in the Church and her tradition.

The Church, in her wisdom, prepares us for our own sharing in the experience and faith of Mary. Through the celebration of the Immaculate Conception, Mary is freed by the stain of original sin in order to bear Christ, the lamb without blemish or spot: a perfected vessel for the perfect goal of our worship. This is highlighted in the Feast we will celebrate tomorrow, that of Our Lady of Guadalupe. (I cannot help but wonder what other Christians who are skeptical of Mary think of our Blessed Mother, and her legacy in Mexico…an entire nation of Aztecs, content with human sacrifice to appease their gods, converted over the extent of 10 years, by the millions…) In the image that was found upon the tilma of St. Juan Diego, which still remains intact, unsullied, today, Mary is believed to be pregnant. This is how Mary comes to us, as the expectant Mother of God, the Mother of Christ… to deny her is to deny Him; to reject her flesh is to reject His very human face… this Advent season is a season for me to continue to meditate on the Son, on the Mother, and my own identity as son, son of God, son of Mary, son of a Church… a Church who is renewed and rejoiced during this Advent season.

Seeds are planted after a time of drought, after a time of devastation, with the hope, with the faith, with the dogged assurance that a great harvest will come. We are this seed-bed in which the Father has placed His hope! Oh that we would dream with Him, and perhaps we will see that in His goodness, our dreams become incarnate realities.

Come Holy Spirit, fill our hearts with eager and earnest expectation. Clear us of the weeds of doubt and despair, for You are Our Hope. Mother Mary, teach us to love your Son, for He chose you—you alone from among all women, to be the one to reveal Him to the world. Thank you for your yes. May we share and persevere in this same commitment this coming Christmas. Amen.