All tagged advent
Watching is so difficult. It can feel incredibly self-conscious, awkward, indulgent, or even just plain boring. Yet watching is what we are called to do in Advent as we await the coming of the Lord in our midst. ‘When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,’ (Luke 21.28) is the gospel injunction, as greeting the apocalypse should be done fearlessly in faith.
The medieval Basque hymn ‘Gabriel’s Message’ tells the story of the Annunciation in the context of Christmas. The worship of heaven and earth conjoin as the chorus repeats the connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary’s unique status as the Mother of God and the desire to honour and praise both her and God.
Advent suffers from a crisis of identity: is it a period of preparation for Christmas, or a period in which we think about Christ’s second coming ‘to judge the living and the dead’? Originally, it seems to have been neither.
Advent is my favourite liturgical season, and I think this is because it expresses something of the Christian life that resonates with my experience of it. Of course it is true that we are resurrection people, and therefore Easter says something fundamentally true about us. Of course we are people of the incarnation, and therefore Christmas gives voice to that aspect of our identity. But we are also people in waiting, but it is a funny kind of waiting. […]
