The Firrst Sunday of Advent

                                                          Advent antiphon on the Venite

           

         

         Our 

         king  

         and  

         savior 

         now 

         draws  

         near, 

         Come, 

         let us adore him. 

                         Saints and Seasons 

The very next Sunday after the celebration of Christ the King last week, the wheel turns and the liturgical year begins anew with Advent that quiet season, a time of preparation, of gestation, of waiting in the dark. Rather than trumpets and timpani, I hear a single oboe asking hauntingly  “Mary did you know?”  Somehow I always get lulled into thinking that it is a gentle season. So I am always surprised when, during Advent, God goes crashing through the underbrush of my life, disrupting the status quo, upsetting things and calling me to new life and growth. He can almost always be counted on to do it and I can almost always be counted on to be surprised. So it’s immensely comforting  to have long time friends who reassure me that, no, this is not unusual, that yes, this is, in fact, what routinely happens in Advent.

Think of Mary and the Child she carries. Jesus, named by the angel even before his conception, began as a tiny spark of life, as we all do. Like us, by the time of his birth, he was a 5 to 9 pound human being waiting for the first breath to full his lungs. It’s a wonderful miracle, but not an easy one. Think of the teen-aged Mary whose very shape changes over the months until walking  sleeping, even breathing is a challenge. Nothing in Mary’s life, or in her body, is the same. Every part of her, every organ, has had to move over, to make way.  It was not a settled time for Mary, nor is it for us if, in our bodies and in our lives, we too are making room for the birth of the Messiah. 

Nor is it a temporary change. Oh, the immediacy of pregnancy is temporary, but the change is permanent. Birth and new life is coming and we never return to what once was. The stretch marks of our soul remain and the journey continues no matter where we are. This Birth changes everything, both in the present and in the  future, because this Child is “the place overlap between heaven and earth” as NT Wright says to us in our own day, or as St Paul said to the Hebrews so long ago. “the reflection of Gods glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

So be still in the darkness for a minute, stand in the quiet eye of the storm as change swirls around you and within you - perhaps you will hear the brush of angels wings and see glory on each face, for surely the presence of the the Lord is in this place. 

Louise Buck 

December 2012