Find Christmas now | Catholic Answer Magazine

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ visited us in great humility; that at the last day he will return in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead; we can ascend to immortal life.

This prayer, used in the Ordinariate (Divine Worship) form of the Mass, is remarkable and quite different from what most Catholics hear today.

In the extraordinary form this Sunday there is a sentence that some of us will be familiar with in English: “Awaken your power, O Lord, and come among us with great power.” It is of course a Latin prayer, but in English Translation it was used in the prayer book tradition and in our missal fourth Advent Sunday – not to be confused with a different “Awakening” prayer used on the last Sunday before Advent. This was not only associated with the necessary stirring of the ingredients for Christmas pudding – which, living in cold, damp England, lie under the bed in the guest room for most of the month.

Today I would like to point out the clarity with which our prayer highlights the meaning of Advent. This happens in two ways.

First, it reminds us that Advent is a time of repentance. This is a time to “cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” This is a particularly good reminder for us Americans who have left behind the carnal excesses of Thanksgiving only to plunge into the consumer extravaganza of Black Friday and holiday shopping. Advent is expressly not a time to be artificially cheerful for the sake of a Christmas season that doesn’t start for another four weeks. This is not to say that we should be gloomy in Advent, just as we should not be gloomy in Lent. But while much of the world is content to skip Advent and create an endless season of celebration, the Holy Church invites us to countercultural witness to recognize that Jesus is coming, but that it is he not here yetboth in relation to Christmas and in relation to the end of the world. Like the birth of a baby in a normal family, the last month of preparation is joyful but also serious: things get real and the preparations are not all fun and games but serious work. When the baby comes, we need to be prepared for more than just a dinner party.

Second, prayer reminds us that the first Advent is inextricably linked to the second. The Purpose Advent is not just about remembering the birth of Christ; It is about preparing ourselves for the final and final coming of Christ into the world – the coming spoken of in the Gospels, when the Son of Man will come in glory to judge the world. We prepare for this Advent so that it does not “come upon us suddenly like a snare,” as Luke says.

How then should we prepare ourselves to avoid being caught suddenly and unprepared? I think Scripture and Tradition give us two clear ways to prepare.

The first is in some ways the most direct, for it is a third form of Christ’s Advent. He comes to us daily on all altars of the Catholic Church in the external form of bread and wine. In this way he himself has established his constant presence among and for us. And so the first way to prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming on the last day is to learn to encounter him as he already comes to us day after day in the Eucharist. We should spend time with him in worship; We should receive Holy Communion with the right intention and in a state of grace. Christ has made it our task to know ourselves in this form, precisely because it is both present to our senses and present beyond our senses. In other words, our senses are trained to both recognize what is there and to detect a presence beyond what is visible.

The second is less direct but no less real: Christ is present in his members, the Church. Consider why the lectionary gives us this reading from 1 Thessalonians along with the others. Saint Paul speaks about the growth of love for the brothers; he talks about treating each other with love so that We will be blameless when Christ returns. In other words, how can we expect to meet Christ with joy when he comes to judge if we do not make the effort to see him in the brothers and sisters who stand alongside us in his church?

In some ways it is more difficult to see Jesus in our fellow Christians than it is to see him in the monstrance. In the Eucharist he does not respond: he is passive, silent, waiting to be known and loved. But in our brothers it is hidden behind human personality, physical diversity and social bonding.

All this means that the hospitality and interaction of the coming season is not insignificant for the more sober purposes of Advent. No, Advent is not Christmas. But if we want receive When it comes to Christmas, in some sense we must find Christmas here and now – in the Eucharist and in the people of God. As at Christmas, our Lord comes to us in great humility. May we learn to see him wherever he is.