Welcome to Advent!

Welcome to Advent and the start to a new liturgical season and Church year! This is how important Advent is!

The word Advent comes from the Latin advenire and it refers to an arrival. Advent tells us that it is four Sundays until Christmas (count them if you don’t believe me). So, why does the Church think we need reminding? Two words – waiting and preparation! We need to start preparing ourselves for Christmas and to wait in anticipation and longing for the arrival of the Christ child. It is this anticipation that makes me always think of the words of the popular Christmas carol, O Holy Night:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

Till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.

 This song immortalises that heralding of Christ’s first coming. It always produces a deep swell of emotion in me when I hear the line “and the soul felt its worth”. This is how Christmas should feel!

So, how do we capture that again?

I want you to remember what Christmas was like as a child. Think of the joy that built almost to the point of bursting as Christmas got one day closer. Advent calendars are a brilliant part of this building excitement. How hard was it to sleep on Christmas Eve? How jubilant was it when you opened your eyes in the wee-small hours of Christmas morning!

Now think of the adults as Christmas gets closer and closer! The anticipation is less like a child’s excitement and more like an ever-approaching doom – “praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen”. This was how Jesus described the end of days. You see, as we grow older, we often become hardened by the cares of life, which can take away a bit of that magic.

So, which type of anticipation do you think feels better to the soul?

I will admit that I don’t usually have this problem. I am fully willing to admit that I am a Christmas tragic. I start listening to Christmas carols about October (and they don’t exit rotation to at least late February). I cry with joy in Christmas movies. I cook ten times more than is needed. My house can be seen from the moon! It would appear to many that the stores and I are in competition to see who can put out their Christmas decorations first. The shops usually win, but I come a close second. I am so happy that I never lost that childlike (not childish) anticipation, that joy and magic that comes with this time of year.

Advent is a season, a word that also derives from Latin, originally relating to the time when seeds were ‘sown’. A preparation for a rebirthing of the world. It is quite fitting that this also corresponds roughly with the Noongar Season of Birak. This is the time when the rain slows and the weather becomes notably warmer. This is the burning season – a time of fuel reduction, of burning back for grazing and seed germination. It is a time to encourage life, and a time when young animals born in the spring venture out, reptiles start to shed their skin for a new one, and baby frogs transform into adulthood. I am always reminded of the changing of the season when my mulberry tree decides to spring back into life. Every year it drops all its leaves, becoming a mess of bare branches and sticks. We always think it is dead, but every year, almost overnight, the thick green foliage spreads and the dark, delicious fruits appear. This is what we are promised every Christmas with the birth of the baby Jesus –life from deadness, a reminder that the Word of God will not pass away. So, we are being prepared for the coming of Christ at Advent, a movement from deadness to life. So, we need to change our paradigm – to think less like it is the end of days and more like it is a time for us to bear fruit for the world to see – for the soul to feel its worth.

So, let us once again look at Christmas with the love of the season. Awaken the child and let’s build the anticipation and get prepared. Christmas is just around the corner, and nothing will stop it.

To put another way. How many of you have seen the movie “The Polar Express”? I imagine most of you (even if you don’t want to admit it). If you remember, the main character is having doubts about Christmas and how ‘real’ it all is. When the sleigh comes out and the reindeer are prancing (as reindeer are prone to do), he can’t hear the jingling of the bells until he believes. This shift is so powerful to him, that when asked what he wants for Christmas, he whispers for one of the bells. At the very end of the movie, the last narration is:

At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell. But as years passed it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah (his sister) found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I have grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe!

 Will you hear the ringing of the bells this Christmas?

Dr Nathan Leber