WEEK OF ADVENT 1, 2010


THE TRADITION: CELEBRATING GOD'S LIFE IN COMMUNITY

St. Peter's Choristers with Professor Tili-Trebicka (at far left)

The First Sunday in Advent marks the beginning a new church calendar year. It's time for another refreshing in the spirit, a letting go of the year before and an anticipation of the year ahead, like a spiritual bath done once a year whether you need it or not! Kind of like Lent but without the rigors of self-examination and guilt.

Advent is more than a cyclical keeping of time: it is also a reaching out beyond temporal self in anticipation of the timeless One who first called us into God's eternal community and would have us prepare for His Second Coming. It is this other sense of Advent that captivates our imagination and turns our habits of the heart to the cosmic. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"

If Advent were only about a calendar event, it would still be satisfying especially for those of us who love tradition namely, the customs of the church that help us hold on to truths revealed from the beginning of the Christian enterprise, the things we value as Christians. These are: the seasons of the church year, the sacraments, the doctrines, the spiritual practices including our ceremonials, the orders of the church, the church, in a word the tradition.

Yet we're not in this thing to be satisfied. We're in it to be saved! Salvation is in the name of the Lord our God, maker of heaven and earth.

In holding both ends of this mystery, in typical Anglican form, we stand in Advent looking back at the calendar event and then, completely turned around, seeing into the future cosmic event. We see at once Jesus the Creche God and Christ the Cosmic God. We prepare for Christ's first coming (tradition) while awaiting Christ's second coming (mysticism).

This turn back again spirit of Advent cries out "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!" Advent is our special time to refocus vision, reorient lives, reposition priorities. In a word, to prepare anew for Christ's Second Coming, promised of old, by celebrating Christ's First Coming. Enjoy the season responsibly!