RELIGION

ADVENT

Advent is not only one of the great seasons of the Church’s year; it’s the beginning of the new liturgical year, though maybe it doesn’t always feel that way. For some of us, perhaps, Advent is not a season we fully engage with. As the work year hurtles towards its conclusion and we get caught up in all the busyness, Advent tends to recede into the background.

But Advent is supposed to be a time of spiritual renewal: a chance to start again, to come home if we’ve drifted away, to rediscover the joy of knowing Jesus Christ. Jesus comes to make his home among us and within us. Advent offers us a chance to rediscover this.

So it’s worth spending some time thinking about what Advent is, why it exists and how we might enter into it more intentionally.

So while Advent was inspired by Lent, its spirituality is quite different. There is a sense of both waiting and preparation, ideas that are both captured in the concept of anticipation.

Anticipation is not simply a feeling of waiting or expectation. It is a doing, even if it’s a slow doing. The word anticipation comes from the Latin word anticipare, which means ‘to take possession of beforehand’ or ‘take care of ahead of time’.

In the context of Advent, we might imagine ourselves in the shoes of someone like Martha or Mary in the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells us, ‘In the course of their journey he came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house’ (10:38). How did Martha prepare her home for Jesus? Ahead of his arrival, how did she ready the home so that it was fit for a divine guest? How did Zacchaeus prepare for Jesus’ arrival for that matter? Or any number of people who found themselves with Jesus under their roof?

Those people who welcomed Jesus might not have seen the full significance of his divinity at the time, but they sensed he was hugely significant. With the advantage of hindsight, we know that the person entering under Martha’s roof was the Son of God, second person of the Holy Trinity made flesh.

So this is what anticipation means in Advent: to actively prepare our home in the knowledge that Christ approaches.

As Jesus told Martha, he doesn’t want us to be ‘distracted’ or to worry over many things (10:40–41). He wants us to discover the ‘better part’ of spending time with him, listening deeply to what he has to say.

https://melbournecatholic.org/news/advent-a-guide-for-the-perplexed

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