“Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning.” (Mk 13:35)
When Jesus said: “Watch!” he wasn’t directing us to the display of Christmas lights in Times Square, to the eye-catching shop window displays, the every-repeating play of TV commercials and web advertising, or even to the giant inflatable Snoopy-dressed-as-Santa in my neighbor’s front yard. He calls us to watch not outwardly but inwardly. When we look inside, what do we see? Probably not twinkling lights and an inflatable Santa Claus.
It is not that our cultural inheritance of Christmas rituals is bad, or even that the Pagan roots of many practices associated with the winter solstice demean our celebration of Christ’s birth. It is natural we should be made uncomfortable and uneasy by the coming of winter, with its growing darkness, bitter cold, the barren earth and bare trees. Throughout the centuries, people have sought solace at this time of year in rituals celebrating light, warmth, togetherness and plenty, with the evergreen tree standing as a sign of hope that not all is lost. That Christians took up such rituals and symbols to celebrate the birth of Christ is an expression of the Church’s embrace of all that is authentically human: “the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties” of all people (Gaudium et Spes, 1).
And yet, there is more, much more to Christmas than seeking natural comfort for natural anxiety. The time of Advent heralded by today’s gospel is set aside for looking inward and making space, awaiting the One who is coming. We begin not with garish lights, but with a single purple candle, not with bright and cheery music, but with songs of exquisite longing, not with gifts and plenty, but with an admission of our emptiness and barrenness of heart. It is often forgotten that Advent, like Lent, is a penitential season. We choose to step away a little from the enjoyment of food and drink, possessions and entertainment so as to identify more readily the deeper needs and desires of the heart. As we have seen, the winter season is a naturally penitential one, when the earth and the trees speak of poverty, nakedness and death. In order to see the light, one has to inhabit the darkness, drink in the silence and wait, becoming more aware of an inner void which cries out to be filled.
Why is it that the empty space of waiting can be so threatening that we seek to fill it with noise and activity? Perhaps it is that silence and inactivity allow the fear that is usually hidden away to surface. I am afraid, I begin to realize, of how poor and helpless I feel when not consumed by activity or numbed by entertainment. Left to myself alone, I feel acutely that I have nothing and am nothing. The prophet Isaiah comes to a similar conclusion about what it is like find oneself separated from God: “All of us have become like unclean people, all our good deeds are like polluted rags; we have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind.” (Is 65:5) And yet it is such poverty of spirit that opens the door to our most eagerly awaited guest. In the book of Revelation, we read: “For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked…. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” (Rv 3:17, 20) Therefore, we must allow ourselves to sit in darkness, feeling the heaviness of long-deferred hope and the helplessness that accompanies the realization that I cannot effect my own salvation. Before I can be ready to receive my Savior, I must learn of my need to be saved. With Isaiah we are brought to the point of crying out, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” (Is 63:19)
The insight Advent offers us is that our insufficiency, our poverty of spirit, the emptiness that gives birth to desire is not a curse, but a gift. We wait not for nothing, or for some vague thing, but for Someone who is somehow already with us. I am struck by the fact that the first reading, for all its anguish, is framed by a double assertion that the Lord is our father, our redeemer, the potter in whose hands we are formed. Despite all infidelity, Israel knew itself embraced by a faithful Creator. Our longing builds on their longing, which was fulfilled beyond their imagining in the Incarnation. Our longing stretches out toward the future coming of the One who has already come and is with us until the end of time.
Guerric of Igny expresses this paradox marvelously: “’What am I waiting for,’ a righteous man may ask, ‘but the Lord?’ ‘I know,’ he says, turning towards him, ‘that you will not disappoint me after such a wait as mine.’ … In this the soul does not have just a bare hope; it overflows with hope, hope mounting upon hope as trial comes upon trial, delay upon delay. I am absolutely sure that in the end he will appear and will prove not to have deceived me; so in spite of the delay he imposes I shall go on waiting for him confidently, because he certainly will come and will not be later than the most timely day.” (Guerric of Igny, First Sermon for Advent)
St Benedict speaks of Lent as a season of spiritual longing which is definitive of monastic life. The Cistercian Fathers might have said that our life is a continual Advent. This is a time to be all the more a monk, since we recognize ourselves as those who have hung our whole life on the promises of God. On our Solemn Profession day, we laid it all out: “Receive me, O Lord, according to your promise and I shall live; do not disappoint me in my hope.” (Ps 119:116) Though the trees may be bare, Advent invites us not to a time of barrenness but of promise, of fruitful waiting and eager expectation. It is a birth that we are awaiting. He who comes, comes from within. The heart that has learned to watch and to wait, that has been educated by silence and has discovered the blessing of the poor in spirit – such a heart can find the still point in the midst of activity and even of chaos. In the hustle and bustle of daily life, a wakeful heart can perceive God stirring within. May our hearts and our world be warmed from within by the certainty of his coming.
I think Guerric should have the last word: “‘I know,’ he says, turning towards him, ‘that you will not disappoint me after such a wait as mine.’”