Advent is meant to be a time for hopeful expectation. For many of us, myself included, Advent can hardly be distinguishable from the upcoming holidays: we play Christmas music, fret over wish lists, and prepare for travel or guests.
As a student, I often spent this time of year hoping for a Christmas miracle of easy final exams. Perhaps the real miracle was that I earned my degrees despite the difficult exams.
There’s preparation everywhere you look, anticipation for the holidays ahead, and the joy they’ll hopefully bring.
This isn’t quite the expectation the Church speaks of when it speaks of Advent. During this season, we anticipate the birth of Christ, the divine Word made flesh, the long-awaited Messiah. We prepare the way for the Lord, watching with vigilance for Emmanuel, God-with-us. We await the fullness of the reign of God, which has begun but is not yet fully realized.
How do we do this amidst the busyness of final exams, end-of-semester programs or the myriad holiday preparations underway? What does it mean to expect, prepare and await?
In expecting the birth of the Savior, think about who it is that you’re expecting. Think about who the divine Word is; who do you expect to encounter in the Messiah?
The awaited Messiah is the one in whose presence and power these works are done. This is who we anticipate, the one who inaugurated the reign of God with his life and ministry. This is the one who is calling us to be in relationship with Him, who came to us in the poverty of the manger, to love us even to the point of the cross. This is a Messiah whose life and love are transformative.
The preparations we are making for the arrival of Christ can be mirrored in our preparation to encounter the poorest among us. This does not simply mean material poverty, although that is an urgent need to be addressed, but spiritual poverty too.
Are our hearts open to the poor? Are our hearts open to Christ? To prepare the way of the Lord, as the second Sunday of Advent’s Gospel points to, we must prepare our hearts to encounter God-with-us, who is still with us in the form of our neediest neighbors.
This leads us to consider the last things, the coming of the reign of God that is here but not fully realized. This is the distinctly eschatological (of the end times) element of Advent. In our readings throughout Advent, we are warned to listen (Matthew 7:26), to be patient (John 5:8), and to be prepared for the coming of the Lord (Isaiah 40:3; Matthew 24:44). This goes beyond the manger to the second coming of Christ. These readings convey the gravity of who we await, and perhaps more importantly, they convey a message of hope.
This Advent season, as we prepare for the usual pattern of exams, travel and decorations, consider thinking about who it is we are expecting in the manger. Consider the people you see every day, especially the most vulnerable, who represent God with us. Who are you waiting for? How will you prepare your heart? How will you be an agent of hope, a sign of the reign of God being unveiled today?
