We all know how excited children get as we draw closer and closer to Christmas. When they are really young they cannot understand time, and will ask day after day, “Is it Christmas now?” As they grow older they begin to count the number of sleeps until Christmas. They may even have an Advent Calendar and each day carefully open a door until the last one is opened on Christmas Eve. Regardless of how time is kept and marked, a child’s excitement grows greater and greater each day.
For me, Advent holds an element of increasing, child-like excitement. It is not the same as the old excitement based on opening Christmas presents. It is a deeper excitement, a richer excitement. I love the return of our Advent Star and the blue vestments, which remind us of the sacrifice Mary made in becoming the Theotokos, the Christ Bearer. I love the haunting lament, Come O Come Emmanuel, and the simpler, older, timeless form of worship. I love the marking of the passage of time as made clear by the candles on the Advent wreath and the scriptural readings that ultimately lead us to the birth of the Christ child.
Each year, I encourage you to set aside some time to be quiet and discover anew the growing excitement of Advent. God cannot speak to us of the wonderful approaching gift of Christ’s birth if we are constantly surrounded by the din of human noise. Each year some of you do as I encourage, and report back to me of how different your Christmas turns out to be. The beauty, depth, and richness of Christmas is multiplied vastly more than the actual time invested.
So, once again in this busy December, I encourage you to be sure to set aside some time each day to simply be quiet and think about what the time leading up to Christmas is truly about. Think also about which parts of Christmas really are the most important; there put your focus and energies. Don’t let this month become an avalanche of events, emotions and actions that sweep everything into a destructive mass.
May God bless and keep you this Advent and always.
With deepest affection,
Fr. David
