December 2, 2007 | 12:00am
It’s a vision from afar, a promise soon to be fulfilled, a dawn — the first blush of light in the eastern sky. The familiar feeling in our hearts is a tender longing, expectancy. Soon the vision won’t be that far from us. Soon the dawn will give way today with its noonday sun, and the light will shine full, dissipating the night. This is how it is this first Sunday of Advent — “advent” meaning “coming”. With God, there’s always something significant coming for us. He opens the Church’s Liturgical Year. He is coming.
In the Philippines, however, we hardly have the time to think of Advent while its message invites to reflection. We cannot reconcile its sober spirit of penance to our early merry-making. The first Christmas silver and gold tinsel, sprays of holly and misletoe begin peeping out of store display windows two months before Advent, the time we begin sorting Christmas cards so we can beat the mail traffic. Carols are played on tapes and piped-in Christmas jingles fill the air. Houses and gardens, plants and pots become aglow with a thousand lights even before the first Sunday of Advent. As early as November, too, we spend hours on weekends and off office hours either in posh shopping malls or brushing shoulders with the crowd who flock to Baclaran or Divisoria in a frantic shopping spree for the best bargains. We stock up hams, cold cuts, cheese, raisins, fruit cakes, dates, nuts, chocolate and name the others. That will insure a loaded Christmas table at noche buena on Christmas midnight. Then we pile up gifts way ahead of time.
Premature Christmas merrymaking has eclipsed Advent, the soul-preparation which could truly make our Christmas the holy celebration it is supposed to be. But we’re missing the whole point of the Redeemer’s coming, a continuing event in history and reality present in our own times, also an expectation of finality in the future.
What are we celebrating at Christmas? Christ’s coming. And there are three comings. The first coming of Jesus in the flesh as man; the second in majesty and glory on the last day; and the third, His coming to our souls in grace. Of the last, Christ said: “Whoever loves me will keep My Word and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our abode with him” (Jn 14:23).
The content of the Christmas cycle is the Savior’s threefold coming. He, Jesus, the celestial Word became incarnated, becoming flesh to save a sinful world. All our strivings to follow in the footsteps of Jesus from His manger in Bethlehem, to His death on Calvary’s Cross, has relevance in view of Christ’s coming in glory at the end of time. His first coming is symbolic of this second and anticipates and prepares us for that eventuality. “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep” (from the liturgy of the first Sunday of Advent). At this beginning of the Advent season, may we see the utter beauty of the Word who proceeds from our heavenly Father; and remember that the dawn of Christmas holds promise, tender and rich in graces, for our souls. May we keep vigilant watch so we do not lose Jesus in the glitter of tinsel and earthly pleasures. Together let us, during this holy season, utter this prayer from an Advent Matins hymn:
Enlighten, Lord, and set on fire our spirits with Thy love,
That dead to earth, they may aspire and live in joys above.
First Sunday of Advent, Matthew 23:37-44
