A ramble on preparing for Advent

Most folks right now, are preparing for Thanksgiving...thinking ahead to Christmas. Decorations and the requisite 'Holiday Aisle' have appeared in the stores...and the temptation is there... boy, is it ever...to succumb to the lure of the music and the decorations and the garland and ornaments and lights...

And yet...there is something far more important to consider...

Advent is not a time for settling in with cocoa and cookies and parties and dancing and fa-la-las. In fact, in the traditional Church, Advent is instead a time for penance...for reflection...for preparation for the coming of Christ...frequently overlooked--because we are so terribly surrounded by the commercialization of a holy-day...Lent is harder to ignore, since we're not as overwhelmed with the Easter Bunny as we are with Santa Claus and Rudolph. But the pre-Christmas period of penance and sacrifice...well, everyone else is going to the parties...everyone else is dancing and singing and shopping and giving gifts and so on and so forth...

I'll admit it--I'm prone to the early decorating, the singing of Christmas songs as early as possible. I don't decorate for most holidays (not on an individual basis, mind you)...but oh, I go whole-hog for Christmas...one year, I pulled the decorations out immediately after Thanksgiving dinner....yes. I was *that* bad. I think that was the Christmas of...1996, so it has been a while. :-)

While I still like to mail off Christmas cards the first day of December, I'm trying to make sure that my cards are not the typical "Ho Ho Ho Have a Happy New Year" tripe. I'm trying to use cards that focus on the import of the season (and I don't mean this year's "Tickle Me Elmo" or Furby or Cabbage Patch Kid). If nothing else, they might give someone a moment's pause...

But for me, I'm trying to make Advent a time of better preparation for the eternal...not just for a couple of days at the end of December. I do my Christmas shopping as far in advance as possible, so I'm not fighting traffic, or waiting on the FEDEx man to arrive...so I can focus more on what Advent--and Christmas--are really all about...

About a God who loved me so much, that He lowered Himself, to become not only Creator...but one of the created. To confine His infinity, within the limits of a finite, mortal being...

It is easy for us, most of us parents, to focus on the wee sweet Baby....or the heavily pregnant mother, traveling soooo far, so late in pregnancy, only to deliver far from home, in a stable, with little assistance of any kind...the shepherds in the field, for those of us who raise animals....we get so focused on making Him come to us, that we seem to forget what that entailed....and why...

That same, sweet, innocent Babe, only a fraction of an infinity later, was brutally sacrificed, for the sins of you, and I...for those who have come before us...for those who will come after us....as precious as our infants are, none of them will be able to do the same as that one Baby lying in a manger...none of us would be able to take away the sin of the world...no matter what we did. We cannot even absolve ourselves...how could we have borne it?

A slightly tangential bit to this post...on a message board I frequent, one poster has been discussing their Baptist church's push to "take God out of the box"...wow...well, in a way, I can understand what they are saying. But unfortunately, what many mean by that phrase is to remove scriptural backing, and remake Jesus in their own image. One person said that they could not imagine Jesus punishing any of us after death, that she couldn't imagine Him being angry or furious...and yet, in scripture it clearly talks about Jesus in the temple, tearing it up with a whip, for the righteous anger of having His Father's temple desecrated by the money-changers...Revelation (or the Apocalypse, for those Catholics among us) gives us another view of a Lord in battle...

And yet, this person said that because they couldn't imagine it, because it didn't fit inside their 'box' for Him, that He could not possibly be that way...there were more comments along the same line...They complain about Christ being in a box...So they take their image of Him out of one box, and shove Him into another...yeahhhhh....

And all the while, He must be rather sadly laughing at our rather pathetic attempts...to confine Him in anything. Because not only is He in the box, He is outside the box...shoot, He *is* the box. For all our attempts to make Him into a god of our making...we succeed in only setting ourselves up as demi-gods, as wee false "gods" with no power, only deluding ourselves with an illusion of what we think is real.

So what *is* real? Real is the blood, splattered down the back of the baby-grown-into-man...real is the sweat, and the splinters, from carrying the cross, under such pain and stress...real is knowing what lies ahead, and facing it anyway....real is forgiving those who sin against you, even as they are killing you slowly...real is the deep agonizing tear of the lash, cutting into you time and again...real is the torment, of the bone-crushing pound of the hammer, as it drives spikes into your hands and feet...the finger-length thorns, crowning your brow...the blood blending with sweat, pouring into your eyes, stinging doubly, triply, beyond bearing... And yet He trudged on. He carried that cross. He bore that burden that no solely mortal soul could bear.

We look upon the cradle, and forget to see the cross contained within the wood. We see the babe, and forget the man-to-come. We watch the shepherds, and forget the crowds that flocked to sing Hosanna to the king...and a week later, screamed for His crucifixion...we hear the angels singing on high...and forget those self-same angels will raise their swords to fight the battle at the end of time...banishing the foe to Hell for all eternity--and the souls who side with them, as well.

We would do well to remember these things, and think of them, as we prepare for Christmas. Take a moment to take Christ out of the boxes we have attempted to put Him...take ourselves down a peg and recognize our complicity in trying to make Him less than He is...and accept that the gift of His birth, came in two parts--within the birth, came the greatest gift, that of His death...

In truth, it is hard sometimes, for us to pull back from the commercialized images of the mother and her Son...to see beyond it to the ugly fact that because of US, because of our sins, because of our own freely made choices, this wee baby, this precious child, Our Lord and God, would DIE, an excruciatingly painful, agonizing death...sacrificed, because of US...those of us who are parents, know we would rather die ourselves, a thousand times, than for one of our children to suffer even a fraction of that borne by Our Lord and Savior...and yet, we continue in our patterns of self-serving behaviors, we fail to look beyond the here and now...and each of us, in our own way, by our own choice, pounds a nail...wields a whip, or pushes a thorn...over and again...

Should we prepare for the celebration of His birth with song, and dance, shopping, and parties, with nary an acknowledgement of our own part in His suffering and death? Or would we better served spending the time before the celebration of His birth here, getting ourselves into a better spot, spiritually, and seeking ways to really work on the sinful traits in our nature... those self-same traits that required His arrival here as the sacrificial Lamb?

There is time for celebration, most certainly, when the day is nigh and that season is upon us in full. But give proper time for spiritual preparation this Advent season. Do not neglect the gift that you can give to Him...a proper awareness of what His coming would eventually mean....

I'll be posting more about our family's Advent activities...but if you want to join us, look into an Advent wreath. They are a very traditional way to remember the season's importance, with scriptural readings, to go along with the lighting of the candles. They can be as simple, or as elaborate as you may prefer...everything from a simple green wreath, with the candles standing in the middle (three purple, one pink), or something more long-lasting, in metal, for taper candles..ours is pewter, in circle form...I just got some new beeswax candles (poured, not wrapped--I'm picky that way, lol), just for the occasion.

Here is a good link, discussing some of the history of Advent wreaths, as well as containing more links, and options of how to celebrate Advent...

http://catholicism.about.com/od/adventactivities/p/Advent_Wreath.htm

A quick google search for images of Advent wreaths, brought up some very traditional versions (evergreens in a circle), but there were also those candles in a straight line, like down the center of a dining room table, some pillar candles were gathered into a large earthenware bowl, surrounded by moss and rocks...

And in the meanwhile, be safe. There are crazed lunatics on the road, dashing hither and yon to gather their gifts while they may..and woe to any who get in their way...I pray you will remain whole and untouched by the unfortunate violence that tends to come around this time of year--and I suspect that this year, it will be worse than most. God bless and keep you, my friends...