Today is perhaps the day I look forward to most all year long. For me, the first Sunday of Advent marks a beginning fraught with meaning on many levels. It is the beginning of a new liturgical year. For faithful Menagerie, it is such a joyous time of hopeful preparation for the birth of our Lord, a time of prayer and reflection, a time to study and ponder the most well known and beloved of all the Bible stories – the birth of the Christ child. However, there is so much more behind that story, so much to build up to. We started the readings at mass this morning with a prophecy from Isaiah.
You, LORD, are our father,
our redeemer you are named forever.
Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways,
and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?
Return for the sake of your servants,
the tribes of your heritage.
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
with the mountains quaking before you,
while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for,
such as they had not heard of from of old.
No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you
doing such deeds for those who wait for him.
Would that you might meet us doing right,
that we were mindful of you in our ways!
Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful;
all of us have become like unclean people,
all our good deeds are like polluted rags;
we have all withered like leaves,
and our guilt carries us away like the wind.
There is none who calls upon your name,
who rouses himself to cling to you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have delivered us up to our guilt.
Yet, O LORD, you are our father;
we are the clay and you the potter:
we are all the work of your hands.
The Church sets before us today the whole picture of the redemptive work of Jesus to come, starting with the passionate yearning of Israel for her Messiah and culminating with Jesus admonishing us to stay awake and prepared for the coming of the master. Oh yes, we have much to prepare for during the next four weeks. May we humbly and powerfully be open and seeking, making our preparations for our Lord, just as we make our preparations for the parties, the meals, the   gifting, the caroling.
For the part of Menagerie who stubbornly refuses to grow up (a small part I try to nourish, being much too serious most of the time) Advent is a fun filled time of decorating, making new crafts, shopping – via computer – for the right gift for those I love. It is a time for making my favorite cookies and breads, pies and cakes, roasting turkeys, serving savory meals. A time to visit the Grinch, a time to hear Dean Martin croon to me along with hearing Bono beg his baby to come home and the finest musicians sing Ave Maria. It used to be, and will be again (I am going to be a grandma, you know!) a time to construct precarious gingerbread houses, a time to make craft paper chains for the tree, a time to read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Best of all is when you come home from Midnight Mass and the little ones put baby Jesus in the manger and then their father reads the the most wonderful story in the world to the family.
For busy Menagerie, the everyday gal who must keep the home fires burning and bring home bacon for the doggies, there is more to be done than ever. The job gets demanding and can be tiring and stressful. The house seems to need more attention than ever, and those cookies don’t bake themselves. There are presents to be wrapped and preparations to be made. Everywhere you look there are Scrooges to battle back. I made a choice long ago to treasure Christmas, to live it, to enjoy it, to share it, but most of all, to try hard to make it a better time for those I encounter, be they dear loved ones or strangers. I pray that I may be a kind word to someone dearly in need of kindness and notice. May I bring a smile to someone who is saddened during the holidays, or just needs to see a smile. This is a daunting task for me, as I am not known for my smiles, but rather for my usually solemn demeanor. This is the time of the year for me to step out of my comfort zone, to stretch and grow.
Then we come to reflective Menagerie. She remembers the magic of Christmas from her childhood, the miracle and haven of that special time briefly holding away the pain and fear of a not too happy childhood. It is a time to be thankful for the gift of joy my mother gave me, the awe she instilled in me for such a wonderful time. It is a time to reflect on how we can hold the horror away at times when we step outside of ourselves and turn our attention outward and upward.
During times past, people often took the wooden wheels off their wagons and brought them in to prevent warping. Perhaps the tradition of the Advent wreath began with decorating these wheels with festive greenery. They were hung horizontally from the ceiling so that as you gazed up from below, you might imagine you were peering up through a window to Heaven, or perhaps as we read in Isaiah, that God would “rend the heavens” for us. We light purple candles on the advent wreath. Purple, the color of royalty to welcome our King. Purple, the color of penitence and fasting, the color of suffering during Holy Week. This color unites the beginning and the end, the birth of the Christ, and foreshadows the death he was born to suffer. On the third Sunday of Advent, called Gaudete Sunday,  we light a pink or rose colored candle to signify that our attention turns less from the penitence and solemnity and more toward the joyous celebration. The word Advent means coming, or arrival. May you experience the joy of the arrival of the Christ child into the world during this Advent season.