ADVENT

The Advent Season

1. Our pre-Christmas season is filled with feverish end-of-year activity. It is a season of anticipation. We look forward to the summer sun and long mild evenings. But in the midst of this time of pleasant anticipations, the biblical and liturgical texts strike a jarring note.

2. The texts disclose a different sense of anticipation. At the centre is the preparation for the arrival of One who is like no other expected arrival! There are hints - that this One will not fit comfortably into our pre-conceived world; that this arrival will be more like a "break-in" of the returning House-holder of the scriptures:
        It may be e in the second watch that
        the House-holder comes, or in the third,
        but blessed are those servants
        if the House-holder finds them ready!   (Lk.12:38)

3. In the biblical and liturgical material of the Advent season, there is also a note of inevitability about this arrival. It cannot be denied or delayed. Like a pregnancy that comes to term - whether the parents are ready or not!! In the texts this disruptive newness isn't expressed in flat language. It is communicated in images and metaphors that undercut reason and play on our awareness. The imagery makes contact with the places in our consciousness that our culture of modernity too much ignores.

Advent Imagery

4. The biblical imagery of the Advent season works on the level of symbols of change. The prophetic material frequently uses the destruction of Jerusalem and the promise of a people's homecoming as a metaphor for the ending of the old age and the breaking in of the new reality. At the beginning of the gospel of Luke, symbolic births herald the arrival of the new age. John the Baptist, himself the subject of a birth in unusual circumstances, prepares the way for the One who will announce God's surprising power-for-life and newness.

5. Christian tradition has drawn imagery from Nature to enhance our awareness of God's new power-for-life. The obvious example is the origin of the festival of Christmas itself. The festival celebrating Christ's birth originated relatively late in the history of the Christian community. It had been known in Rome from around 330 c.e.. It was the Christianisation of the festival of the northern winter solstice. Christ was imagined as, "the Sun of Righteousness" and the theme of light allowed a linking of the celebration of Jesus' birth with the more ancient Christian celebration of Easter.

6. In the Southern Hemisphere, the most obvious natural imagery at this time of the year is drawn from the growing heat of the Sun and longer twilights. Mid-summer marks the completion of spring growth under the influence of the gathering strength of the sun's heat. The Pohutukawa tree comes to full blossom. The use of symbols drawn from Nature to promote awareness of Christian truth, makes us conscious that much of the traditional imagery of the Advent-Christmas period is Euro-centric. The long and dignified history of the use of such imagery is an indicatiion of its power to inspire. This fact also reinforces the legitimacy of the search for appropriate symbols for religious truth from our perspective as a South Pacific culture. The use of indigenous cultural imagery is still tentative.

A Dying World

7. Advent biblical and liturgical imagery, along with the symbols drawn from our natural environment, can suggest surprising changes that perfect or complete.  They imply the end of the old world and herald a new and different reality.  These meanings on the symbolic level are foreign to our modern mentality.  Our science will not credit any outside agency.  Our self-sufficient economy accustoms us to the prospect that we can buy or trade our way out of difficulties.

8. But our imaginative awareness is assaulted by the texts of the Advent season. And Nature works an effect that we do well to respect! When we give space for our subconsciousness to work on this imagery, we begin to see connections!! What of the old world can be saved? Who can be saved? The answer is -- NOTHING can be saved in its present shape!! The known world of our values, power and security -- is on the way out! The bibical imagery and the signs of change in Nature, have the ability to free our imagination from the dominance of modern ideologies and idolatries. These at best, can only deliver a partial answer to the true source of beauty, goodness and truth in our lives.

9. Thus, our experience of change can be re-interpreted. The liturgical season of Advent provides an introduction to dealing with the ending of our old, familiar, failing world. In fact, the liturgical material of the Advent season helps us deal with the dismantling of any system of meaning and power. In the Advent liturgies we hear the challenge to boldly voice the hurt entailed by the loss of our old world and to trust the One for whom we wait - so we can truely let go of that world.

Practical Matters

10. This series of commentaries has a practical concern. It aims to make more accessible the biblical and liturgical resources of the Advent season for interpretation, proclamation and practice. It is about the arrival of new power that breaks through the illusion of control we have of our familiar world.

11. When we join the Christian assembly in Advent, our common purpose is to create a space for a fresh hearing of the texts. The hearing of the texts and the experience of the Eucharistic liturgy, make possible the re-imaging of our old world settlements, with a supply of "other" material. This material often does not fit with our old ways. It may generate openings where the new truth can have its say. But a fresh "hearing" will not happen unless there is leadership backed by adequate resources.

12. The resources in this set of commentaries are meant to help the various leadership roles for Advent worship - in an atmosphere where a re-hearing and a re-imaging of the traditional material, can occur. The leader of Sunday liturgy is the catalysts for the beginning of new conversations and conversions regarding our practice of Christian discipleship and our living the "good life."

13. The process would be helped immensely, if all participants had some prior familiarity with the texts and context of the readings, before the Sunday celebration. The references for the readings are given, so people can use their own bibles to prepare. If planning community participation of the Advent liturgies, the themes in the gathering, confessional and dismissal prayer material, may be useful. Advent reflection groups, may find use for the brief introductions to the context of the the individual readings as the starting point for sharing. The Sunday Psalm can be recited communally as a meeting-opening prayer. The dismissal and blessing prayers may be useful as meeting-closing prayers.

14. If the occasion arises for community reconciliation during Advent, the commentaries provide review material for examing our personal and group performance in light of our participation in the previous Sunday's liturgy. The interpretative notes on the biblical texts emphasise awareness of the social conditions of the time when the texts were produced. This perspective is valuable. As modern disciples we can better understand the original use of the texts. Then we are ready to handle these texts that the Church offers, in the new social reality.

Opting for the Poor

15. The perspective of the commentaries favours a hearing from the disadvantaged point of view. The particular perspective for offering these resources for Advent, is to "fund" a fresh hearing of the Biblical texts and a fresh experiencing of the dynamic of the liturgy. The resources section, represent the "bits and pieces" of an alternative imagination by which such an experience of liturgy can be applied to modern living. Potential users might include R.C.I.A. candidates, their mentors, liturgical planning groups, co-ordinators of evangelisation programmes and youth leaders. The resources are for anyone organising the gathering of the Christian community during the Advent season.

16. At the core of our hearing and experiencing in fresh ways is the growth of an awareness that the world we take for granted in economics, politics and everywhere else, is itself an imaginative construction. Therefore it can be shaped differently! Our faith and liturgical traditions provide us with the basic material out of which an alternatively constructed world can be properly imagined. When we imagine differently, we can act differently!

17. The weekly Sunday liturgy is the normal setting in which a liturgical resource can "fund" this re-imaging. Advent is the time of the year to begin a process which continues throughout the rest of the year.It is the claim of our faith about the centrality of the Word and the Sacrament to the dynamics of adequate modern discipleship, that warrant yet another collection of liturgical resources such as are found here!

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