Homily for the First Sunday of Advent
Advent is a strange season. That strangeness dramatically is highlighted in today's Mass. We find, side by side, readings of consolation, and readings of apparent terror and panic. In that widely used text from Isaiah, the people of Judah are sustained with this divine promise that Jerusalem will shortly be restored to its former position of pre-eminence: "In those days I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice in the land. Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety." That branch was to spring from the root of Jesse. This is addressed to the Jewish people who were suffering under the harsh rule of the Assyrians. Their capital city had long been reduced to the status of a provincial town. The danger was that the people themselves would accept this disastrous situation as a permanent reality. It is the challenge of the prophet to keep alive the memory of Jerusalem's greatness. And he does this through the prophetic promise: God, through the lips of the prophet, reminds his people of their roots, and promises them that he will restore Jerusalem. Judah will not disappear from their memory; Judah will be saved and, moreover, Jerusalem will be their secure capital once more. The dead past is revived so that a new future may be created. And that new future will be positively peaceful: swords will be beaten into plough-shares, spears into harvest-hooks. This text is enough to lift the heart and fire the patriotism of any down-hearted Jew. It is a text of sure hope and enormous promise.
In our gospel text from Matthew, Jesus speaks of the world approaching harrowing crisis. He compares present circumstances to the disastrous days of Noah. Everything was proceeding normally, and then the floods came and swept the lot away. The same will happen soon, Jesus warns his audience. Fear-filled anticipation marks that gospel passage. You would need to have a strange sense of yourself and your world to derive any joy or hope from that reading. So, woven into our Advent liturgy are texts of terror and texts of promise, instilling fear and hope in equal measure. I'm sure as you listened to that gospel reading, most of you will have sensed that it is decidedly at odds with the cultural optimism of the secular Christmas. For example, there is little chance of you walking into your local supermarket and hearing that gospel passage set to seasonal music. Advent then is a season of stress, in season is which very different texts and sentiments contend for ascendancy. Advent is a season under stress, as one writer put it.
These two aspects of our modern Advent liturgy have their origins in two separate and very different traditions: the texts of terror, relating to the end of the world, have their origins in 4th century Gaul. There Advent did not exist. Instead for the last three Sundays of the year the Gauls gathered in their churches to mark the progress of the world towards its end. There they listened to the scriptures prophesying the end of the world. They would have prepared for this through fasting and abstinence. The New Year for them would begin with the birth of Christ on Christmas Day. But they made no connection at all between the end and the beginning. They celebrated the end of the year through anticipating the end of time, and they began anew on Christmas day.
But in Rome a different tradition evolved independently. (Paul and the 'Day of the Lord'.) In Rome the Christians were reconciled more quickly to the fact that the end was not immanent, that the end was postponed indefinitely. By the 5th century the focus rested securely on the first coming of Christ, on his birthday. There the people assembled to commemorate and celebrate this event. Feast, rather than fast was the order of the day. They too, like their friends in Gaul, assembled in their churches. But there the Roman Christians had the Old Testament texts of promise read to them. The emphasis here was on celebration and thanksgiving. In the sixth century, an attempt was made to harmonise the very different celebrations, to impose some universal uniformity on the liturgical calendar. In this harmonisation, both elements were retained, the texts of terror cheek by jowl with the texts of promise. In recent times, in secular society at any rate, the stress has fallen decidedly on the celebration aspect of the season. If you fail to smile throughout the entire season, there is a danger of you being committed to an institution for the bewildered. There is a contrived euphoria abroad, a manufactured, shallow sentimentality that is as inflated and as substantial as the balloons that announce it. But this was not always so in the Irish tradition. Ireland was nearer to Gaul than to Rome, culturally and well a geographically. So the fasting element persisted up to relatively recent times. Patrick Kavanagh of course has captured forever this element in his famous poem, Advent:
We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the advent-darkened room
Where the dry bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.As I said already, unrelieved happiness and celebration seems to dominate our present celebration of Christmas. But we know from experience that unrelieved happiness and celebration is false. It does not conform to life as we know it. It clouds over the fragility of life. Perhaps this is the function of the texts of terror: they ground our celebrations in reality. We have not here a lasting city.
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