Salvador Fabre shares with the readers of Exaudi his weekly article entitled “The importance of Advent”.
***
Why is Advent so important in the life of the Church? We could almost say that the Church lives in a continuous Advent, in the continuous expectation of Christ’s coming into the world. We say it, perhaps without realising it too much, every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come”; in Holy Mass too, various prayers make us look forward to Christ’s second coming.
In reality, Advent leads us to look simultaneously forward and backward. The first three weeks of Advent we look forward, we long, so to speak, for the second coming of Jesus Christ, when the time will be fulfilled, and he will come to bring order to this troubled world. From 16 December we begin the Christmas novena, in which we look back, remembering and preparing to commemorate the first coming of Jesus. The synthesis of this alternative looking back and looking forward bears fruit in the present, in the season of Advent, where we are invited to accentuate our prayer life and increase our works of mercy. Looking to the past and to the future allows us to transform the present, making it both fruitful and profound.
The Church is Christ-centred, and Advent calls her to look at Christ in two different facets: in the humility of his first coming, and in the glory of his second coming. But St Bernard speaks to us of a third coming, hidden, in the heart of each Christian in the present, that is to say, as they strive to live Advent well. Now, the meaning of the Church is to present Jesus and to prepare the Kingdom of Christ, in the words of the last Council, it is to be the seed and the beginning, the sign and the instrument of Christ’s reign. In this sense, the Church has an “adventual” character, anxiously and actively awaiting that second coming.
This is why the season of Advent is, par excellence, the season of hope, and has as its model or essential point of reference, the Virgin Mary, whom we contemplate in a state of good hope, that is, pregnant with the joyful expectation of the birth of her Son. Mary is the model of hope, the content of hope is Christ. Perhaps our time is characterised by the need for authentic hope. Problems, crises, pandemics, the failure of political utopias have robbed us of hope; so many pains and failures have diminished the hope of humanity. We have many small hopes that help us to face the meaninglessness of existence, but we lack the great Hope, with a capital letter, that gives meaning to this world and to our lives.
Advent is therefore a time of waiting, but not passive waiting. The alternative look at the past and the future finds a creative synthesis in the present time. It is in the “now” that we are invited to live advent intensely. How can we do this? It is a spiritual cocktail containing three ingredients: prayer, penance and works of mercy. Prayer that helps us to focus our gaze on Jesus and to place all our hope in Him; penance that helps us to detach ourselves from material goods, to be sober in their use and enjoyment, in order to be able to raise our gaze to heaven; works of mercy that lead us to go out of ourselves to meet the needy and the suffering, thus authentic piety, which is not merely intimate, but which opens out and bears fruit in our surroundings.
In order to live Advent well, the wisdom of popular piety offers us a powerful element, which it is worthwhile to rescue, in the “Advent Wreath”. Sometimes we are in too much of a hurry to put up the Christmas tree, and we forget the Advent wreath. We patiently light the candles on it, week by week, to the rhythm of our prayers, penances and works of mercy. May the Advent wreath never be missing in any Christian home, together with the Nativity, to remind us that we are in this time of waiting, and to live its spiritual dimension, so often threatened by the consumerism of Christmas shopping. Advent, a time to look inward and forward, as we strive to live in sobriety and charity towards our neighbours.
