Editorial

Security

Politics

World

Letters

Sports

Obituaries

Archives

With the onset of Advent every year, a new church liturgical cycle begins. Advent this year began on December 1st. Advent is a derivation from the Latin 'Adventus' which means coming. Here it refers to the coming of Christ. Advent is a time of preparation for the holy festival of Christmas, the birth of God of time and space, in time.

Advent reminds us of the long period of waiting of the people of God in the Old Testament expecting a Messiah. Therefore Advent in the New Testament makes us to prepare and wait in the joyful hope of the coming of Jesus at Christmas. It is very evident today that the primary occupation of Christians is for a worldly Christmas, and hence a preoccupation so much so that non Christian would fail today to understand the event as a religious one, since preparations border on a gamut of unholy paraphanalia like hampers, raffles, santas, cantatas et al none of which can witness to the event proper.

The Church from time immemorial is truly concerned about the religious side of Christmas and does not hesitate to prepare the faithful for a religious event with austerity, prayer and meditation on the mystery that surrounds the Birth of God on planet earth. Hence Advent is the perennial spiritual preparation of the people of God to commemorate the mystery of the Incarnation in its proper attitude.

The liturgy of the four Sundays preceding Christmas day prepares Christians spiritually for that august event of God coming in human flesh. Advent therefore is not a romantic preview of that mystery as is made to appear today by wayward Christians whose behaviour at Advent is a counter witnessing to the religious event of all time, due to their engrossment in a commercial and consumeristic haste as is seen in the market economy Christmas today.

In point of fact Advent and Christmas today has another important dimension in that the two should remind Christians more on the second coming of Jesus in Glory which event is now imminent than ever. In fact the early Christians did not celebrate Christmas during the first three centuries, hoping that Christ would make His 2nd Coming any time then. If that hope lingered in them at that time, it should all the more linger in us now, now that 2000 years have passed since the first coming of Jesus in the weakness of a mortal baby.

This joyful expectation needs to be nursed within us and we should live in that actual hope of His coming in glory as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So Advent and Christmas from now need to, not only remind us of the 2nd Glorious Advent, but prepare us and keep us in that joyful hope of His Coming. Therefore the tinsel and glamorous Christmas that we have got used to, scandalising non Christians down the centuries, must give place to a more meaningful understanding of the real mystery that Christmas is.

The mystery of the Incarnation, complements the other mystery that of Redemption. The first Christmas was a necessary prerequisite for the Death & Resurrection of Jesus, which is the heart of Christianity. For had not Jesus died there would have been no Christianity.

It was to die, an act necessitated by the Almighty, that Jesus came down taking human flesh, so that in His death man may be reconciled to God. Christmas has to be understood in that context and none else. The advent of Christ in Bethlehem at the first Christmas was only a prelude to His Advent at the Parousia, i.e. the 2nd Coming in majesty. In between these two comings Christ comes to us in Grace. (Jn. 14/23) So Christmas is not a past event neither the Parousia a future event since Jesus as God is present among us here and now.

Advent should awaken and rekindle the joyful hope of the coming of Jesus at the end of time as we pray during the liturgy of the Eucharist. Daily we need to, as Christians live in the light and hope of His 2nd Coming in glory and majesty.

The saint we need for our guidance in Advent is the Blessed Mother Mary, who prepared for His first Coming then, and who is preparing the world today for His Coming again as she told Fr. Stephan Gobi, to whom in spiritual elocution she has confessed it. If Mary be our guide at Advent, our prayer during this time should be the "Angelus" reminiscing the Annunciation, since which date Mary prepared for the coming of the God son.

That Christmas is an ongoing event and cannot be limited to Christmas day is apparent from the recitation of the Angelus thrice daily. The Church wants us to remember that God became man that man may become God. This prayer culminates in the Resurrection of Jesus which tells us that all of us are born not to die which is after all not the end, but to be resurrected one day, that we may be brought to the glory of His resurrection.

Together with this thought our prayer at Advent should be for the wish that God may send Jesus soon. The prayer "Marana - tha" meaning Lord Jesus come, was The prayer of the early Christian and we see St. Pail ending his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians with this wish. So let us too wish this Christmas that God may send His Son in glory and majesty soon.

Moratuwa Lenard RM

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager