Advent: The Mystery of Waiting

Advent is the liturgical season when we pay special attention to the mystery of waiting. We have a real problem here because most of us don't like waiting, we don't see it as something to celebrate.

In fact this may well be one of the reasons why people don't understand Advent correctly - although it may also be true that not celebrating it as we should has led us to misunderstand the value of waiting.

Whereas waiting bores and often irritates us, the Bible teaches us that if we approach it in the right spirit, waiting is a creative moment when we grow spiritually. When we wait we are in touch with an essential aspect of our humanity which is that we are dependent on God and on one another. It is also an act of love since, by waiting for others, we pay them the respect of let­ting them be free.

Waiting is a mystery - God waits and nature waits - so that when we as individuals wait we go beyond ourselves and enter into a sacred life-giving process, experiencing that we are made in the image and likeness of God. This is why Advent is a time of celebration.

It is the season when we remember with gratitude creative experiences of waiting in our lives or the lives of people we have known, the people who have waited for us at one time or another. We also remember the great waiting experiences in human history, in the Bible, and especially in the life of Jesus.

But we must also make Advent a time of teaching. During this season all those involved in the work of Christian education, whether as catechists or preachers or guides, should explore the mystery of waiting: true and false ways of waiting, the danger of not knowing how to wait, ascetical practices that will help us wait more creatively.

Finally, waiting can be, as we know from our own experience, a time of suffering and sometimes of despair. In Advent, we make a special effort to feel for those who are crying out in their agony, 'How long, O Lord?’ - those we can name and the countless others 'whose faith is known to God alone'.

Through our meditation we can let the special grace of the season flow through us to these brothers and sisters of ours, turning their mourning into dancing and their time of barrenness into one of abundance and fertility.

The liturgy of the word is a teaching moment. It is not abstract teaching, where truths are presented to be learnt, but teaching by celebration.

We celebrate biblical stories which ex­emplify the spirit of the particular season, identifying with the persons in them. In the process we learn more about biblical values, experience repentance as we become more aware of how we (and the whole church) have failed to practise those values, and pray that we will enter more fully into God's plan for us - that his kingdom will come.

The main person we identify with is Jesus himself. At each liturgical season we celebrate one particular stage of his life on earth, not as a past event but as a way in which he continues to live among us.

The grace of Advent is hope, the virtue by which we human beings can recognise and welcome God present in the world but not experienced with our senses.

The corresponding stage in Jesus' life which we celebrate in this season is when he was in the womb of Mary. It was a time in the history of salvation when the Word was made flesh, but was not visible, his presence was real but an object of hope, like the tiny mustard seed which we trust will eventually become a great tree in whose branches the birds of the air will shelter.

The fruit of Advent then is that we grow in the virtue of hope that God is present even when he is hidden. We are undaunted by evil, do not give up on our dreams, face with confidence the present historical moment (ours, that of our society and of the modern world), welcome the people he sends us, and help them get in touch with the best in themselves - where God is present.

In celebrating Jesus in the womb of Mary we celebrate all the times, in the Bible and in history, when human beings have been invited by God to recognise his hidden presence in the world. The liturgical readings for the season then present us with biblical persons who are models of hope.

The Bible teaches this through stories, not abstract definitions. It does not attempt to define what hope is, but invites us to meditate on people of hope. We celebrate them and enter into their attitudes, how they interpreted the events of their time and how they related to their contemporaries.

By doing this we celebrate our own experiences of hope, in ourselves and others. In the process we experience conversion, renew our hope which had grown cold.

We also pray that those in despair will turn to hope and we commit ourselves to bring-mg hope into the world.