|
Thought for the
Week Sunday
2 December 2007 – Advent Sunday
So,
what is Advent all about then? Well,
it really all began with Easter, but then the whole of the Christian Faith
did, didn’t it? Definitely by the
Second Century, and probably much earlier, Christians had come to realise
that Easter is absolutely central to our Faith. In the death of Jesus, and his rising from
death, our faith was born. It was
early on the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark
that the women who had cared for Jesus discovered that his tomb was
empty. From then on, all his disciples,
including us, have regarded Sundays as “special”, and every Sunday we
celebrate a mini-Easter. But
Easter itself, the anniversary (as much as you can have an anniversary when
you work by the lunar calendar) of his death and resurrection, quickly became
the most important day of the whole year.
Christians therefore had to take great steps to prepare for
Easter. Jesus, we are told by Luke,
was forty days in the wilderness, tempted by Satan, to prepare for his
ministry. So the Church developed a forty-day
period of penitence, of fasting, praying, alms-giving and good works, to
prepare for Easter, which we know today as Lent. But you
cannot have Easter without Incarnation.
We cannot be sure when Christians first celebrated the birth of Jesus
on 25th December. Of course
no record was kept of the birth dates of ordinary people, and even if Joseph
and Mary had remembered the date, nobody thought it important enough to
record for history. The
first record we have of Jesus’ birth date as 25th December is in
Sextus Julius Africanus’s work “Chronographiai” of 221, but it is almost
certain that Africanus was not the first to suggest this date. Why 25th
December? Well it’s nine months after
the annunciation on 25th March.
The ancients believed that 25th March was the Winter
Solstice, the shortest day of the year, the day when there was the least sun
and light. There was a tradition that
Jesus was crucified on the winter solstice.
The Jews believed that Prophets lived an exact whole number of years, counting
from the moment of conception. Jesus
was certainly a prophet, indeed the greatest ever, so it made sense for Him
to have been conceived and to have died on 25th March. Therefore, he must have been born nine
months later, on the 25th December. To
start with, Christians did not celebrate Jesus’s birthday. It was not considered right to do so. Pagan Kings and Emperors celebrated their
birthdays, not Christians, and certainly not the Messiah. For Christians, the important day was the
day of your death, for that was when you went to heaven. Don’t forget that at this time, many
Christians were dying for their faith (and of course for our faith) in the
arenas of When
Christianity became the official religion of the Of
course, Easter would always be the greatest feast of the Church, and it still
is. But now, Christians could expect
to die naturally, in their beds, rather than being forced to share in the
death of Christ in the arenas. As
Christianity moved out from under the shadow of persecution, so other aspects
of the life of our Lord took a prominent role. Chief among these was Incarnation, the miracle
that the Son of God should be born a man, in a human family, at a particular
time and place within history. In many
parts of the Church, it was the annunciation, or the conception of Jesus that
was the main Feast of the Incarnation, but by about 480, Christmas, the
Birthday of Jesus, was being celebrated.
Perhaps to make it easier for pagans to convert to Christianity, the
Church copied the 12 days of the Roman midwinter feast of the Saturnalia, and
called them the twelve days of Christmas. And that’s
where Advent came in. Just as there
were the forty days of Lent to prepare for Easter, so there were the forty
days of Advent to prepare for Christmas.
In
fact, Advent was never really kept as strictly as Lent was. Perhaps one intensive period of penitence
and fasting was enough for one year.
Perhaps the Church was keen to emphasise that Easter was the more
important. At any rate, Advent was
shortened, and became just the month of December, as it is today. Advent
has two main themes. It is to prepare
to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and it is to prepare for his second coming
at the end of time. We tend to use the
Latin word “Advent” to talk about the first coming of Jesus, and the Greek
word “Parousia” to talk about his second coming, but both words mean exactly
the same, “coming”. In our
first reading today, Isaiah is looking forward to the end of time, when all
nations will come to God through his chosen people In our
Gospel Reading, Matthew addresses the same theme. Matthew understands that nobody knows when
the end is to be, and indeed it is important that nobody should think that
they do know when the end is to be.
Just like death, the coming of the Lord could happen at any time. No, you are not supposed to worry about
when it will be, but does that mean you can just relax, and not bother about
it? Absolutely not! Matthew stressed that we must all be ready,
all of the time. In this passage,
Matthew draws a vivid distinction between the everyday life (two men in a
field, two women grinding corn), and the sudden and total destruction of the
Day of the Lord. It
doesn’t matter how long the end is delayed, we must each be ready to account
for everything before the Judge eternal, throned in splendour, all the
time. It is his world. There is no aspect of life hidden from
God. Everything that we have comes
from Him, and it is of his own that we give Him. In the same way, everything that we do, or
say or think, He sees, and knows, and understands, and He loves us all the
same. May God
bless you, as you keep this holy season of Advent, preparing to celebrate the
coming of the Lord in the humble stable at Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy
of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |