Advent collision...

Fr. Joachim Trytania

You might describe it as a long entrance procession. The cars inch slowly toward the symbols of the season, where Christmas music plays all day and colored lights, crches, and that jolly, round bearded figure dressed in red are everywhere in this sensually charged environment. At the end of the day, the people return to their cars with their purchases. Some head off to their local parish to attend the liturgy. There, to the harried, worried assemblies of God's people who hear a hundred times a day that they must find the perfect gift for a husband / wife / child / friend, Paul proclaims, "Do not worry about anything, but in everything let your requests be known to God by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving" (Philippians 4:6). Similarly he exhorts those who have just fought through the traffic at the local mega-mall to "Rejoice!" and to live out of gentleness. For those who struggle to find a gift for someone who needs nothing, John the Baptist urges a radical sharing of half of everything we own, from clothes to money - not so we can acquire more, either - but simply for the sake of justice, for this is how it must be when God reigns (Luke 3:10-14).

We are involved in a cosmological religion in which the economy has replaced nature as sacred. The "liturgical calendar" of this alternate religious system is at work in our world, not just at Christmas, but all year round. All of us know how difficult celebrating Advent and Christmas has become. People's stress levels escalate as already overburdened lives are taxed to the breaking point by the social and financial demands of the season. More and more people lament that Christmas has just gotten to be too much - too much money, too much entertaining, too many demands. Seasonal charitable activities don't still the nagging sense that the season is disordered. Those who work in communities where people's economic and social reality can't even begin to cope with the demands of daily life, let alone those of the season, witness other kinds of stress and sorrow.

The spiritual trajectories of these two religions collide in our lives. The collision explains why it is so difficult to celebrate Advent, and why Christmas is so anticlimactic. While at another time in our culture and history the Christian liturgy and its symbols may have dominated the month of December, today they are eclipsed by the contemporary religio-economic experience. With what kind of strategies can we respond to this situation?

More than ever we must not give up on the Advent season. For years the Church has been urging us to keep the Advent season, to not let Christmas celebrations slip back into the weeks of Advent. We need to opt consciously for this kind of calendar keeping. We need to take prophets more seriously. The economic system can easily dull our sense of vulnerability, which is essential for recognizing the presence of God. The prophets dare to speak to that sense of vulnerability made acute by the demands of the season, and awaken our solidarity, as well as our patience, hope and compassion. The Advent speaks about the human heart's deepest longings. Slow down your pace. Give yourself time for prayer. Develop the Christmas season. The secular season ends by the Sunday after Christmas at the latest - and preparations for the next celebration of that liturgical cycle, Valentine's Day, begin almost immediately. Keep enough energy to sustain the Christmas season, remembering that it ends on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, and plumb its depths of the incarnation manifested in veiled glory. Keep this in mind: no matter how deeply we have bought into the satisfaction offered by the competitor, it is not lasting. True peace comes from the God whose Word takes our flesh. Awaken new possibilities for justice, hope and love - the very conversion to which John the Baptist calls us in the Advent season.