Advent and the joy of Christmas

The season of Advent is upon us. In the Church calendar, the first Sunday after the last day of November is Advent Sunday. There are four Advent Sundays, the last of which falls on the Sunday (December 24 this year) before Christmas.

Advent means "arrival", the arrival of the Son of God in the world. To a serious-minded Christian, God's becoming one of us is a cause for joy and rejoicing. But even without such realization the approaching days to Christmas is still a season of merry-making to many people, an occasion for partying and enjoyment when wine and songs come in handy.

To be alive and be happy, what's wrong with that? Cheerfulness is in fact a must for Christians. Cheerfulness implies complete trust in God's care and concern. Worry? Why should one worry when God, our loving provider, is there? Worry not for the things of the morrow, says Jesus, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. And later he told his disciples: Behold the birds in the air for they neither reap nor gather food in the barn, but your Father feeds them. Are you not more worthy than birds?

Comforting words. So a Christian has no reason to be dour and downhearted - especially at Christmas. To be so is to miss the message of God's becoming man.

For millennia man lived in darkness. He blundered through the years scarcely knowing what was right and wrong. Even the idea of a Supreme Being escaped him. Thus he fashioned idols out of wood or stone and did homage to them. He made obeisance to trees and living creatures believing these wielded powers that could do him good or harm. There were a few, to be sure, whose heart and mind become the touchstone of the Divine intellect. But man refused to believe them. They were hounded and persecuted, their prophecies wasted in the desert of disbelief. Man as a result became wolf to man. Idolatry, debauchery, plunder were the order of the day. Bones and flesh and nothing else he thought himself to be. To be dissolved into the sea like a raindrop, to disappear into nothingness sans a trace of selfhood - such was the myopia that enslaved man.

Then one cold night in a nameless realm the Light came, and God and man were on talking terms again. For the Light brightened every dark cave of man's mind and heart and gradually he learned there was a Father who cared, a being dimensioned in eternity whose dwelling is in the womb of stars.

A thought on this stirs the soul into fresh awakening. The eyes see what others fail to see and hear what others fail to hear. And one's being is lifted into a state of pure joy. So much of darkness wafts away and a new day proclaims. Joy in its purest vintage - this is the joy the secular world picks up and turns into a twisted affair of self-indulgence and bacchanalia. "The world is to much with us", laments the poet Wordsworth, "getting and spending we lay waste our power…" And having wasted ourselves we wasted too our concepts of the true, the good and the beautiful. Yet this need not happen to a Christian. Given a modicum of faith, he can if he wants to, keep himself in the world and at the same time distance himself from it. He can plant his feet on the ground but at the same time savor the thought of the supernatural. Everything God created is good, and the world is his handiwork. We should therefore love the world - but only to a certain point, otherwise we forget the other most important world where we are all destined.

St. Josemaria Escriva has something to say on this: "In order to reach sanctity, an ordinary Christian… has no reason to abandon the world, since that is precisely where he is to find Christ. He needs no external signs, such as a habit or insignias. All the signs of his dedication are external: A constant presence of God and a spirit of mortification…"

Advent ushers in the mood of quiet joy which as Christmas nears ripens into exuberance and gayety. But in the midst of it all the presence of God is a must. Without it our celebration of the greatest event in human history would be meaningless.

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