Traditionally, Advent was a season in which we
reflected upon the 4 last things, that is on Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.
Only God lives in eternity, which is
without beginning or end, past or future. The blessed share in His eternal
life, so their everlasting happiness, or beatitude, is also called eternal
life. The beatific vision of God is eternal life. ‘This is eternal life’, Jesus
taught His apostles, ‘to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
thou has sent’ (John 17:3).
Except in the Eastern
Orthodox Churches, the penitential aspect of the Season of Advent has been
almost totally replaced by an emphasis on hope and anticipation. ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light:
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light
shined’ (Isaiah 9:2). Instead of reflection on the four last things, we have
tended to emphasize the rite of the last few days of Advent, from 17 to 23
December, the service of the great ‘O’s, which are reflected in the great Advent
hymn ‘O come, O come Emmanuel’. The importance
of the ‘O Antiphons’ is that each one highlights a title for the Messiah: O
Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix
Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O
Oriens (O Rising Sun), O Rex Gentium (O King of the
Nations), and O Emmanuel. Also, each one refers to the prophecy of
Isaiah of the coming of the Messiah.
In this double
focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of
individuals and the congregation, as they affirm that Christ has come, that He
is present in the world today, and that He will come again in power. That
acknowledgment provides a basis for ‘Kingdom ethics’, for holy living arising
from a profound sense that we live ‘between the times’ and are called to be
faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people. So, as the church
celebrates God’s in-breaking into history in the Incarnation, and anticipates a
future consummation of that history for which ‘all creation is groaning
awaiting its redemption’ (Romans 8:23), it also confesses its own responsibility as a people
commissioned to ‘love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart[s]’ and to ‘love [our]
neighbour as [ourselves]’.
Finally,
Advent is the season par excellence when we remember the contribution of the
prophets, the last of the prophets before Christ – John the Baptist – and the
significance of prophecy. For how shall we hear the
call to repentance unless someone cries out above the tumult and destruction
and delusion?
May the Advent figure of John, the relentless envoy and prophet in God’s
name, be no stranger in our wilderness this year. For he is none other than ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’
(Mark 1:3; Isaiah 40:3).
