My brother has often asked my parents why we still celebrate Advent. The most obvious answer is some type of cultural entrenchment and nostalgia – I remember going to the Weinachtsmärkte in Berlin as a child, learning the German carols that my family still sings every year. At my Catholic high school, every December, the priest would talk about Advent as a season of "anticipation" and meditation, Advent's importance predicated entirely on the inevitable coming of Christmas just as Lent was on Easter's. This never quite resonated with me: all the anticipation I felt was for Advent itself, so that by the time it was over, Christmas felt underwhelming, almost like an afterthought.
Of course, I will not pretend that this is remotely akin to how I see my religious friends, peers, and family members experience the same season. And yet I wonder – how does the sense of prophecy, the repeated anticipation with promise of reward actually influence that period of waiting and reflection, the chance to meditate on change?
From the Old Testament onwards, waiting is a constant: waiting through the famine ("for it is two years since the famine began to be upon the land, and five years more remain," Genesis 45:6), waiting in the desert ("and the children of Israel ate manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land," Exodus 16:35).
From a Christian perspective, it sets up a growing need, suspense, that is then so conveniently answered by the New Testament. This is, of course precisely the point: to offer an answer, to make sense of the questions. Matthew and Luke's gospels both begin with a detailing of Jesus' lineage. "All the generations, from Abraham to David, [...] from David to the transmigration of Babylon, [...] from the transmigration of Babylon to Christ" (Matthew 1:17) have been building up to the nativity, and the nativity gives them meaning.
Ironically, neither of the gospels that depict the nativity provide many details of the time immediately before it. There is very little about Mary (although Luke does describe the Visitation), very little drama in the leading up to this event that is so foundational to everything that follows from it, and the "anchor" in the Christian cyclical calendar, as we discussed in class.
Although I did not much resonate with what my high school priest said about advent, I did like to humor him by imagining myself "in the story." While I was never part of a Christmas play as a child, I had many friends who were, and my understanding was that there was much more emphasis on the experience of those at the nativity than the gospels directly provide. The "first advent" (if one could call it that), was much more predicated on uncertainty and fear than what Advent evokes in the mind now – reflection mitigated by certainty and stability, not equal to the earth-shattering importance of the nativity.
The Advent Lyrics of Exeter Book, and the York Mystery Plays provide a somewhat more "pure" insight into this idea of the "mystery," and yet still don't quite manage to replicate that which I imagine was critical to the actual experience of it: the uncertainty. One does not quite feel what is at stake. Expressions of lament are followed too closely by faith in salvation: "but we live in a world of rubble and wreckage. / Now we need our Creator, our Craftsman and King, / to [...] rescue the weary" (Lyric I 15-21).
I suppose what I mean to express is that the "mystery" and the "miracle" appear somewhat muddled. Joseph's confusion and dilemma in the Pewterer's and Founder's Joseph's Trouble About Mary didn't seem to me to be slanderous but appeared truly genuine. As Dorothy Sayers put it, "the dogma is the drama."
One of my high school religion teachers liked to say that believing in Christianity fully is not meant to be easy, nor is it meant to fit neatly into one's mindset. The challenge of belief, the challenge of testing oneself against what one would like to believe, is far more important that prompt acceptance of those beliefs. Joseph seems to exemplify that. If he did not wrestle with his distrust, his fear, the uncertainty of what was to come, his ultimate acceptance would not have mattered nearly as much.
Perhaps it is ironic for me to say all of this when I myself do not believe in it, and am thus not in a position to judge how others come to their faith – but I think of how I approach Advent: as a period not defined by a certain end, somewhat more of a secular meditation that happens to coincide with a Church tradition. But its value comes from the time spent in it, not knowing what is to come. I imagine the importance of the "mystery" and "miracle" components of the nativity came about in much the same way: because although the nativity was an answer to many questions, to many years of waiting, it did not end the conversation.
- clmr
I have the feeling you are on the edge of something extremely important here, and I wish you could say more! I have experienced something the same thing you describe—in finding the event itself less fulfilling (oddly) than the anticipation for it. Perhaps this is why I love the Advent Lyrics so much—they are all about this longing. I would have liked to hear more about your reactions to the texts themselves, the way they set up the longing, which (thanks to the liturgical cycle) they repeat every year. If every year the festal cycle fulfills the expectation, every year it also rehearses the "not-yet." And I find myself agreeing with you absolutely that there is something more powerful in the longing—perhaps because that is our condition in this life, when (most of us) do not see God? And can't?
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