WHEN GOD DOES HIS WORK

When I was a little girl, it was a tradition that in the first week of December, my paternal grandmother would take my two sisters and me shopping for our Christmas dresses. These were the days before neighborhood malls so we would be driven into the city center to one of the large department stores. The Christmas decorations and music filled my senses while store assistants rushed around bringing dresses and shoes and frilly socks for my grandmother to inspect. Us three girls all got exactly the same outfit, including a little monogramed handkerchief to place in our little-girl handbags. The day ended with a lovely lunch in the department store café. It was a day of the year that my sisters and I waited for and anticipated with much joy.  For us, this day marked the beginning of the Christmas season.

We have entered the time of Advent on the Church calendar which marks the beginning of the Christmas season and the Church liturgical year.  It is a time of anticipation, a time of waiting. All around us the season is celebrated with rituals. In some churches, Advent wreaths are displayed, a “hanging of the greens” ceremony may be held and evergreen trees with Chrismon ornaments are placed in strategic places in the church.

Advent celebrates three anticipations – (1) the first coming of Christ through his birth in Bethlehem, (2) the second coming of Christ for which we ready ourselves and (3) the coming of Christ into the heart of believers.

The world over, people know of the celebration of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, but few are mindful of, or celebrate the two other anticipations.

This Advent season, let us remember that Christ is coming again and, as in the parable of the maidens waiting for the bridegroom[1], we need to keep ourselves ready.

Which brings us to the third anticipation - the coming of Christ in the heart of believers. Christ coming into our heart is not a one-time event, it is a lifetime practice. We receive him each morning in our waking, we hold him cherished in our daily going and we keep him close in our nighttime resting. 

This past Sunday, the first day of Advent, my husband and I put up and decorated the Christmas trees in our home. It has been a long, hard year of mourning for me. Three deaths of close family at the end of last year left me emotionally exhausted and not in the mood to face Christmas decorations this year.  However, I pushed through and let the ritual do its work in me. When I woke up the next morning, the soft lights in the early darkness lifted my spirits. In them I saw the Light of the world and the tree lights did their job.

Advent is a time of anticipation and of waiting. In an age of instant everything, we may think it tedious to wait but it is all-important. Waiting builds us in ways that instant cannot.  Anticipation is a form of hope which strengthens us.  Rituals and traditions are formational. Ceremonies are a grace that bless us.

Let us embrace this season of Advent, this time of anticipation, for it is in the waiting that God does his work.

May we think on these things!

[1] Matthew 25:1-13