Learning to wait amid Advent’s conversion

Dec 03, 2014

By Effie Caldarola
Is there a Catholic who doesn’t know the seasons of Advent and Lent? You would truly be the Catholic ostrich with a head firmly buried, to miss those two important times in our liturgical life. Yet, the casual observer might be tempted to describe the seasons as very different.

Lent starts out with ashes and thoughts of our mortality. We “give up” something for Lent, thinking of Christ’s sacrifice for us. It’s a somber time. We avoid excess, using less so that we may give more to the poor. Lent impels us to simplify, to pare down.

Advent, on the other hand, begins with soft candles and thoughts of a newborn baby. If Lent entices us to give up treats, Advent seems awash in sugar. Let’s face it, is there any other time of the year when you make fudge? Or drink eggnog?

Advent can be an embarrassment of opulence. We try not to overspend, but we’re tempted at every street corner and by every advertisement. Gaudiness prevails. While Lent enshrouds us in deep purple, Advent stuns us with color.

Yet, despite their obvious cultural, and even liturgical, differences, Lent and Advent call to us in fundamentally the same way. They call us to change our lives, to accept the call to conversion.

As we begin the season of Advent, it’s good to reflect on the true spiritual nature of this time of waiting. Advent asks us to quiet down and be reflective, to listen to the call to discipleship that is at the heart of the Christian message, be it Lent or Advent.

To understand Advent as a time leading us to conversion, it helps to use the daily lectionary readings as a guide. In our Advent readings, the prophet Isaiah asks, “Why do you let us wander, Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we do not fear you?”

The tremendous truth of Advent is that we are a people who wait. Sometimes waiting leads to distraction and futility, sometimes to a heart grown hard. But the Christian waits in hope. The wood of the manger is always shadowed by the wood of the cross. But the cross always reminds us of resurrection.

We rejoice in the marvelous fact that Christ was born into history. He came into the world in blood and suffering, just as we did. By his very birth, he made explicit the dignity and worth of our humanity.

His birth, into a tiny corner of the mighty Roman Empire, calls us to reflect on our place in history. Did his birth change things? It changed everything. And yet each day, suffering continues, poverty endures, war rages, injustice lingers.

The conversion experience of Advent compels us to ask: What is my place in this? Where is my hand in making the promised kingdom a reality?

This is how the sometimes sentimentalized warmth-and-fuzziness of the season leads us to a deeper Advent reflection. Advent teaches us how to wait, something we find hard to do in our world. We want what we want, and we want it now. We fuss at long lines at the market. We fume when our computer slows down even for a few seconds. We want satisfaction. Now.

And yet, our waiting continues. Advent embraces our waiting, this simple fact of our humanity, and it offers us the conviction that we continue to wait in joyful hope. And Advent demands of us: what are you doing with your time of waiting, with your moment in salvation history?

Isaiah continues to challenge us throughout Advent. He foresees a Messiah who will bring justice: “Justice shall be the band around his waist.”

Again, we are asked to explore our role in bringing Christ’s justice to this earth. What have we done today to prepare for the one who is to come?