Are we preparing for Christ’s coming or are we just shopping for Christmas? In a world where it's "Always Christmas, never winter" what is the season of Advent all about? How are we to prepare for the coming of Christ's Kingdom?
Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:37-44
A few years before I was born, the BBC released a TV adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ most famous work, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I remember watching it as a small boy, my grandma came over from Guernsey and had it on video cassette, and we watched it together. One of the most memorable scenes in that film, and in the book by C.S. Lewis, is the conversation between Lucy Pevensie and Mr Tumnus, where he explains what life is like under the rule of the white witch;
"It is winter in Narnia,” said Mr. Tumnus, “and has been for ever so long…. always winter, but never Christmas.”
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
Always winter but never Christmas. C.S. Lewis said that line was designed to evoke horror. To have every child who read the book cry out in fright what do you mean it’s never Christmas?! It immediately communicates to the reader that something is badly, badly wrong.
Today though we might say the opposite; that we live in a world that is always Christmas, and never Winter. When I arrived in Jersey, in the first week of September, the shops were already putting out their Christmas food!
Our consumer culture does this every year, seemingly earlier and earlier, it jumps straight to Christmas before we’ve even lit the first candle on our Advent wreath. The Christmas songs seem to be blaring out in every shop as soon as Remembrance Sunday ends. They’ll do it again at Easter too, the displays and decorations will be out before Ash Wednesday is even in sight.
The culture outside, all around us, doesn’t do preparation, or waiting, and certainly doesn’t understand penance. It is geared entirely towards selling us stuff, getting us to spend money, often money we don’t have on things we don’t need. It’s an instant gratification culture. Always Christmas, never winter.
It’s very easy to get swept up in the excitement for Christmas that’s all around us; I have to confess that, to my great shame, when I first arrived and saw the Christmas food going out in the Co-op, I succumbed almost immediately and bought a jar of duck fat for my roast potatoes and a Terry’s chocolate orange.
But what the Church asks us to do during this season of Advent is pull back, to wait, to properly prepare for the season of Christmas. Advent means coming, it is a season when we wait for the coming of Jesus Christ. And in the first few weeks we meditate on the coming of His Kingdom; the Church asks us to keep Advent like a ‘Little Lent’ – a season of prayer and penance, where we try to detach ourselves from the things of this world, from the food and drink, and parties, and other material things, and try to become poor and humble in spirit so that we are ready to meet the poor Christ child, born in a manger at Christmas.
This preparation for Christmas looks back to Jesus’ first coming as a child in Bethlehem, and looks forward to our final destiny, to the day when Christ will come again, not as a child in swaddling clothes but as a judge, a king riding in majesty to claim His throne. That day will take us, Jesus says, by surprise; we do not know when He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and that day will overtake us like Noah’s flood.
This season of Advent, this Little Lent, is a reminder of that terrifying reality. What we are being asked in today’s Gospel reading is no more and no less than this: Am I ready, today, to meet God? Am I ready, today, to be judged? Because like a thief in the night, Jesus says, that hour is coming for all of us. The challenge for us, is to ask whether we are living our lives like we actually believe this? Are we living our lives as if today might be our last day? Are we living as if the Kingdom could come and overtake us at any moment? Are we preparing for Christ’s coming or are we just shopping for Christmas?
This season of Advent reigns us in, it reminds us that the Kingdom is fast approaching, that the King is preparing to sit the throne of Judgement and bring all nations to himself. In this season we are called to prepare for Christ’s coming again. How can we do this?
There are five ways, five little preparations we can make, five habits to get ourselves into that will make a good preparation for the season of Christmas, and the good news is you’re already doing at least one of them;
1. Come to Mass, come to Mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist. By receiving him in a spirit of reverence and humility, we become more and more like him.
2. Go to Confession, make it a habit during Advent to come to Church and make a good Confession. Prepare for Christ’s coming by examining your conscience, searching out your sins, and finding ways to do better next time. When I came back to the Faith, aged 22, I went to confession for the first time in five years, the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent, and I had a lot to confess. If anyone is nervous about going back to confession after a long time, I will tell you now what the priest told me then; There is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over a thousand righteous men in no need of repentance. God’s mercy is abundant, and He is waiting to forgive you in the confessional!
3. Pray the Rosary; to prepare for Christ’s coming, pray with the Mother of God, pray for yourselves and for the people you love, pray those words of the Hail Mary pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, as a deliberate preparation for the coming of Christ.
4. Do some kind of penance; that means make some kind of sacrifice for other people. Give up your time, or give up your money, give up something for the good of others; try perhaps depriving yourself of that extra Costa Coffee or slice of cake and slipping the money you would have spent into the poor box instead!
5. Do some kind of reading or study, read the scriptures, study the lives of the saints, and try to imitate what you find there. This is where I make a little plug; and say that if you look in the Newsletter you will find an advert for a course we are running here at St Thomas’ Hall on Friday evenings, showing Robert Barron’s pivotal players series after the Friday Mass; an excellent and easy way to look at the lives of Saints and famous Catholics, and ask what we might learn from them. That’s every Friday evening, beginning this Friday with St Francis of Assisi!
This Advent, we remember that we are a people journeying towards the end, journeying towards the coming Kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are called to leave behind the world of always Christmas, never winter, to live, for a few short weeks, in Winter before that joyful celebration of Christmas and the coming of Christ.
Preached in St Thomas' Church, Jersey. 26th/27th November 2022 : The first Sunday of Advent.
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