Advent Expectancy

A new church season begins

Advent is the church’s season of preparing for the coming of Jesus Christ.  We begin the season on the First Sunday of Advent with an anticipation of the Second Coming, the consummation of the world and the gathering up of all creation. In the middle weeks of Advent, we linger with John the Baptist and learn from that exemplary herald something about the task of preparation, something about becoming ready to encounter Christ.  In the last phase of Advent we move leisurely toward Bethlehem and the birth of the infant Jesus.  Our companion through that stage of Advent is inevitably Mary of Nazareth.  As we anticipate the birth of her son, we acknowledge fully that his birth is not frozen and confined to the past, but is a living, lively, and present reality.  And so Advent is our season of expectancy; it is when we who trust in God’s promise are pregnant with hope.

      As we approach Advent I have been particularly thankful that Grace Church rings the Angelus.  The Angelus is a devotion prayed by many throughout the world - church bells toll at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. calling people to this prayer.  The Angelus is based on the Annunciation - Mary’s encounter with the Archangel Gabriel in which she learns of God’s invitation to her and consents to be God-bearer for the world.  Those who pray the Angelus then, and I hope this Advent that includes all of us who are within earshot of those bells, pray not just in remembrance of Mary, but in imitation of her as well.  The Angelus may be to us an opportunity to offer ourselves to God - an occasion to hear God’s invitation, and to say ‘yes’ to a participation in bearing and birthing Christ for and in the world.