MANILA, Philippines —With Christmas comes the Advent season which, in Medieval times, was a period of fasting and a time when people’s thoughts were focused on the expected second coming of Christ Jesus.
These days, this part of the Advent may have been forgotten and seen only as the period leading up to Christmas, but the essence of the Advent season remains.
Dressed down to the core, Advent is symbolized by the Advent wreath, which is round and made with evergreen leaves. A Christian tradition that symbolizes the passage of the four weeks of Advent in the liturgical calendar of the Western church, the Advent wreath has four candles, which represent hope, peace, joy and love.
Three are colored purple and the fourth one is pink or rose. Some Advent wreaths have a fifth candle, which is white, in the center of the wreath. Beginning with the first Sunday of Advent, the first purple candle is lit.
An additional candle is lit every Sunday thereafter — purple on the second Sunday, pink on the third and back to purple on the fourth Sunday — until all the candles are lit. If the wreath has a fifth, white candle, which is considered as the Christ candle, this is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
This custom of lighting Advent candles after prayers was originally done by families at home, but these days, this has already been adopted to public worship. In the Catholic Church, for instance, the lighting of the Advent candle is done during Mass, and families in the community are usually invited to do the honors.
Dating back to the 1800s
The concept of the Advent wreath is originally Lutheran. Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808-1881), a Lutheran pastor in Germany who spent years doing urban mission work among the poor, is credited to be the “inventor” of the modern Advent wreath in the 19th century.
In 1839, he made a large wooden ring out of an old cartwheel and put 24 small red candles and four large white candles in position. Every weekday and Saturday, a small red candle was lit, and every Sunday, a large white candle gets the spark in a mission school founded by Wichern in Hamburg, Germany.
After a while, Protestant churches in Germany started doing the same, and the Advent wreath eventually evolved into the smaller wreath with four or five candles of modern times. Roman Catholics in Germany adopted the practice in the 1920s, and then it started spreading outside Germany.
Every element involved in the tradition of lighting Advent candles has a meaning. The circular shape of the Advent wreath symbolizes God’s infinite love, and evergreen leaves signify the hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ.
The colors of the candles, three purples and one pink or rose, correspond with the colors of the liturgical vestments for the Sundays of Advent. The first candle represents hope, the second symbolizes peace, the third stands for joy, and the fourth means love.
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