Advent Reflections

The Advent season is upon us again. During this time of year we are assaulted with all the bustle and high pressure commercial hype. We are everywhere exhorted to buy this and that in order to keep the economic engine humming. The latest technological inventions in video games and music apparatus are trotted out at this time as well as high profile CD and DVD releases. With all this emphasis on commercial activity it is almost enough to make one forget what this time of year really means.

Almost.



Despite all the commercialism there are still more than a few hints in the air of the spirituality that should be more in evidence at this time of year. Christmas specials on TV and Christmas movies stress the more spiritual(If not specifically Christian) aspects of the holidays such as giving to the less fortunate and spending time with family and the emphasis on loving one’s neighbor. Even the lonely and less fortunate among us feel a particular sting at this time because they sense that there is a goodness this time of year signifies that indicates that there plight is something that is not right in this universe.


There seems to be a certain amount of merriment surrounding this time of year with the decorations ,parties, music, etc. It seems that even the mundane activities are permeated with a certain sense of transcendent joy. It is as if there is a sense that this time of year signifies that there is something to human existence that points to something more than mere materialism.

Thomas Merton spelled this out when he wrote “In the special and heavenly light which shines around the coming of the Word, all ordinary things are transfigured.”(1) It is like people in the West deep down sense something of the world transforming event that was and is the Incarnation, that many seem to sense, however dimly, that there is something Divine about Advent that commercialism can’t completely hide or extinguish.

As always, the Church through Christ has the answer for this intuition of the part of humanity. As then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote,” The last word about being is no longer the unamable absolute but love, which makes itself visable in the God who himself becomes a creature and thus unites the creature with the Creator.”(2) Karl Adam writes” For Christ our Lord is the incarnate revelation of God’s love, nor is the Body of Christ anything else but the implanting and growth of that same love, in all those who are incorporated into Christ.”(3)

Again, now Pope Benedict XVI writes in his recent encyclical Spe Salvi concerning the visit of the wise men


“ This scene , in fact, overturns the world view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe. It is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love_a Person. .....above everything there is a personal will, there is a spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself.”(4)

There was a popular song out a decade or so ago titled”What if God were one of us?” by Joan Osborne. It makes me wonder if she ever went to Sunday school because to the Christian GOD IS ONE OF US! That is the reason for the joy of Advent. “He shall be called Emanuel, GOD WITH US”. Again, now Pope Benedict XVI writes in his recent encyclical that the advent of Christ signals that God of love rules the universe, not impersonal forces, that we are free. God became man because of His love for us and thus showed us the true nature of divinity. In the midst of the pagan despair(a despair that is returning in this post modern world) He came to the world and conquered death and showed humanity that death and sin are not the defining aspect of human existence, that there is something beyond. that the meaning of life transcends the mundane experience of much of our existence.

All this much of humanity in the West seems to sense, however dimly in some. It is as if they sense that there is more to our human existence than the post modern nihilism that is creeping into the psyche of many. It is our duty of those of us who have been given the knowledge of significance of the incarnation to advance this knowledge. The Church’s celebration of Advent points to the God who broke into the space-time continuum and became part of the material world by becoming man to show this. Thus it is that we in the Church can show the direction their intuition leads by our words and especially our deeds. Thus we can show that the spiritual inclinations that still make themselves felt at this time of year are not mere sentimentalism or the wishful dreams of human imagination but are a manifestation of that part of the human person that senses the existence of a higher reality.

End notes

1. Thomas Merton, A Thomas Merton Reader, Image Books, Doubleday, New York, 1989P. 360

2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, Ignatius Press, San Francisco CA.2003, P. 84

3. Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, Image Books, Doubleday, 1954, P. 146

4 Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Encyclical Spe Salvi ch 5.