On a day like this, I find myself thinking back to what I was doing this time last year. Living in London, aware of the shortening days and wintry nights, awe-struck by the lights along Oxford St and the music played in churches like St Martin-in-the-fields.
But conscious also, just like I am here in NZ, of how much we overlook this season of Advent as we busy ourselves with preparations for Christmas.

So, this morning I want to counter this imbalance. I want to read an article posted on the website at the college I attended in London. As well as being well-written it offers us an opportunity to think more deeply about what this season is really about.

It’s called… ‘Advent: A Wakeful Longing’. 

As autumn slips into winter, (we may wish to say, as spring slips into summer) we’re left with memories of its light and colours, sounds and scents; the liturgy of time’s seasons engages all our senses.

With the beginning of Advent, the Church also awakes our senses. She puts on purple, changes her song and enters in to a different rhythm of worship, more contemplative and silent.

Throughout December, the liturgy… enters into a prayerful reverie of growing intensity. It has two dimensions:  a longing and a wakefulness of heart and mind…

Both dimensions are familiar to us… – from our waiting, for example, for the return of someone we love, or, especially, for the birth of a child. Then, every member of the family experiences the strange and beautiful rhythms of a vigil when time is reversed – when the future does not run ahead of us but comes towards us.
 
At the moment of arrival… the expected shows itself to be completely unexpected, for the new life claims us and utterly changes everything.

Scripture knows this time well and calls it the ‘kairos’ – that moment of readiness when God’s time touches and transforms our time and we know there’s no going back.

It’s the moment of gift, a new time, the time of decision and change.

It’s also the time of judgement, for it’s the moment that lights up the shadows in our lives and our history with the glory of God’s truth. 

But, more than anything else, this ‘kairos time’ is the time of presence: Christ among us and with us, now and for all time. That’s why it’s the time of new life, for as the time of His presence, it’s time filled and fulfilled: God gives us time when He gives us His Son.

….
Contemplative wakefulness is the other dimension of Advent. It’s an invitation to see with fresh eyes; to look out upon the world with all its beauty and life, and its scars and wounds, caused by our violence and exploitation. Advent removes the cataracts from our eyes and our vision changes.

In this prayer of wakefulness we begin to look upon the faces we’d not normally see:
the faces hidden in the busy anonymous crowds,
the faces with lonely eyes,
the faces demonized by our fears and ignorance,
the faces of those we’ve erased because they may make demands upon us.
As the eyes of our heart and mind begin to grow alert, these faces come to us, pleading, waiting for our look of recognition and our touch of compassion.
 
In Advent we’ve eyes to see back along the roads of time.

We see its twists and cul-de-sacs, the terrible carnage of our wars and policies. We can look back too at our relationships, seeing our mistakes and deceptions and knowing the need for healing.

In our… prayer of wakefulness we grow in humility, and with that comes an openness to receive. We come to understand how much we need the gift of Christ so as to change, to live again, to love and give again.

In Advent we come to learn our poverty and understand why purple is the season’s colour. If we can take the gift of Advent time and let it teach us this prayer of wakefulness, we will come to see another face – the face of a God who is infinitely poor, so poor that he has become one of us.

God is so hidden by his poverty we keep passing him by. This scandalously poor God who doesn’t answer all our questions and solve our problems, who offers no programmes, who writes no books of astonishing cleverness proving his existence and clarifying the mysteries of the universe, has nothing to give us but himself.

In a culture so captivated by its own image and confident about its own capacities, the poverty of God makes him an object of ridicule or someone to be dismissed as useless in the superficial chatter of the dinner party.

Only the poor can risk loving such a God.
 
In Advent this mendicant God moves among us and only the poor can see him because only they can understand why he is poor. In his poverty, God has made himself homeless. He has no place to dwell except in us.

And, when we come to know our own poverty, we understand all we can do is to let him make his home in us.
 
Advent reminds us Christ is the light that has come into our world. He’s no threat to humanity, but the gift that makes it whole. Advent teaches us that, for God, nothing is impossible…

For a complete copy of this articles, go to www.heythrop.ac.uk/theological-spiritual-reflection/advent-a-wakeful-longing—1st-december-2006.html.

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