By Fr. Ross Epping
For The Catholic Messenger
Advent is an unsettling time. A season “not for the faint of heart,” as Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge often wrote. These four weeks of Advent are designed to help us untie the bonds of our earthly desires as we learn, or relearn, to turn our focus back to the message of Jesus Christ.
Now, I am certainly not a purist when it comes to the Advent season. Much to the dismay of some folks, I’ve had my Christmas tree up for days already. But, tree or no tree, this holy season is set apart from Christmas for reasons both beautiful and necessary.
I find myself falling in love each new Advent with the fact that the Church begins her new year when the days are still getting darker. I enjoy the reminder that this season rejects shallow sentimentality and false cheer. And I love that each new year kicks off a string of Gospels with images not of swaddling clothes or twinkly stars or sleeping lambs, but of the world as it really is, here and now — beautiful, fragile and always on the verge of coming apart at the seams.
One of our great temptations during Advent is to domesticate the message of the season. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is no taming the message of Christ. There is no taming the message of the Baptist. There is no taming of the message of Advent — repentance, redemption, renewal.
We are used to making Advent a time of nostalgia. In reality, it is a time of a radical grace; a grace that pierces through our stubborn ways as it ignites a vigor and hope for our own lives and the life of the world. Its purpose, while preparing us for the coming of Christ, is to also move us to a place where we are bearing, out in the world, a new way of seeing, being and believing.
We do not hear in these beginning weeks of Advent about waiting for a baby to be born. Instead, we are asked to see how the world is in need of a hope that frees us from fear. We immerse ourselves in Gospel stories that rouse the hearts of the faithful to dig deep and root out all that is self-indulgent. We are called to embrace a more authentic life of faith.
The texts and Scriptures we read are meant to help us let go of our earthly attachments, our tendencies toward violence and hatred and our inner addictions. Now is not the time to wait passively and peacefully for Jesus just to show up. It is the time to be faithful in our works and fervent in our prayer. It is, as Christ shares, a time to stand up, raise our heads and witness the world around us.
When I am able to do that, to see the world as it is, I recognize that the brokenness in which Christ came as a baby isn’t all that different from our brokenness of today. Rather than spending the season looking at the world around me through the glow of twinkling lights, I am ready to be honest about what I see. And what God is calling me to do once I take notice.
(Father Ross Epping is pastor of St. Mary Parish in Fairfield and St. Alphonsus Parish in Mount Pleasant.)
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