It was early morning. I lit the first candle and began to sing an ancient hymn: O Come, Emmanuel. The ritual is familiar to me. It’s something I do each year as the Christian period known as Advent begins.
Advent: it’s a word derived from Latin. It means the arrival or the coming. It implies that something new is arriving or has arrived. For example, the advent of sliced bread or the advent of the Internet.
In the Christian context, “advent” is used to describe the time of anticipation for the arrival of Christmas and the coming of Christ. The time period is configured by the four Sundays prior to Christmas itself. Those who observe this period of Advent symbolize it by the lighting of four candles usually nested in a wreathe. Sometimes those candles are blue representing hope, sometimes they are purple representing anticipation, and sometimes they are red representing longing. The Advent candles and wreathe are a tradition created by German Reformer Martin Luther. (He used red candles, in case you were wondering.) I don’t think the color of the candles themselves are very important. Instead, the candles being lit one week after another draw people to an awareness of the spreading and radiating of light to illumine us.
If the candles and wreathe aren’t important, then what is? To answer that question, I rely on a German mystic whose writing inspired Martin Luther: Eckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart. He was a controversial preacher and theologian who lived in the 15th Century. Writing in the early 1400s, Eckhart boldly asked, “What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.”
Observing the period of Advent is an important spiritual practice for me. That’s not because I think there’s something magical about it or that I’m maintaining some tradition from the Middle Ages. The time of Advent helps me to refocus on what’s important. The important thing about Christmas for me is not Black Friday sales, cookie exchanges, parties, and silly songs about Grandma and that reindeer. While I may enjoy the holiday traditions and decorations, marking Advent draws me to become more aware that my spiritual journey is not just about my personal transformation. Instead, the importance of my spiritual journey is about the world: to birth the presence of the Holy One today, in my era and in my culture. The story of Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem is an inspiring legend. Biblical scholars decades ago have explained that the details of the legend don’t have much basis in historical fact. But that’s not important to me. What is important to me is that, as I make my way through life, I strive to engage with others in my part of the world in some way that makes the presence of the Divine real.
As a follower of the teachings of Jesus, I understand that the presence of the Divine is made real in my time and in my culture when I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those imprisoned, and, in every way possible, make justice my aim. For it is in these tangible actions, I demonstrate love for others. That is what Jesus taught: love one another as I have loved you.
If it helps you to light the candles of an Advent wreath and sing songs like O Come, Emmanuel, by all means just do it! But what’s spiritually significant in these weeks before Christmas is that we understand that Christ is only born this Christmas is when we allow ourselves to be like Mary and bring Christ into the world today.
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