Advent and the Lord's Coming

My Scripture column for today's edition of Our Sunday Visitor is online and, it appears, available to non-subscribers:

When the Son of God came the first time, St. Augustine stated in a sermon, "he came in obscurity, it was to be judged. When he comes openly it will be to judge." This observation is a helpful yet challenging bridge between last week's Gospel reading -- the parable of the sheep and the goats -- and today's Gospel reading, proclaimed on the first day of the liturgical year.

"Advent" comes from the Latin word adventus, which in turn is a translation of the Greek word parousia. Both words indicate a coming, or arrival, and a presence. Advent focuses simultaneously on the first and second comings of Christ, and his presence with us now, especially in the Eucharist. The parousia -- sometimes called the second coming of Christ -- will be realized fully at the end of time, but has already been initiated by the Incarnation, which revealed the glory of God among men (see Jn 1:14).

While some Christians fixate upon the return of Christ to the point that little else matters, Catholics should -- especially during Advent -- gaze upon and receive the Eucharist, knowing that it is why anything matters at all. In doing so, we proclaim his coming, anticipating the culmination of time and history.

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Here are some thoughts on Advent from Joseph Ratzinger, taken from Seek That Which Is Above: Meditations Through the Year (Ignatius Press, 1986, 2007):

What is Advent? Many answers can be given. We can grumble and say that it is nothing but a pretext for hectic activity and commercialism, prettified with sentimental cliches in which people stopped believing ages ago. In many cases this may be true, but it is not the whole picture.

We can say the reverse, that Advent is a time when, in the midst of an unbelieving world, something of the luminous quality of this lost faith is still perceptible, like a visual echo. Just as stars are visible long after they have become extinct, since their erstwhile light is still on its way to us, so this mystery frequently offers some warmth and hope even to those who are no longer able to believe in it.

Advent is a time when a kindness that is otherwise almost entirely forgotten is mobilized; namely, the willingness to think of others and give them a token of kindness. Finally Advent is a time when old customs live again, for instance, in the singing of carols which takes place all over the country. In the melodies and the words of these carols, something of the simplicity, imagination and glad strength of the faith of our forefathers makes itself heard in our age, bringing consolation and encouraging us perhaps to have another go at that faith which could make people so glad in such hard times.

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And this, from Pope Benedict XVI's homily given at the vespers of the first Sunday of this Advent:

With these vespers we begin the itinerary of a new liturgical year, entering into the first of the seasons that constitute that year: Advent. In the biblical reading that we just heard, taken from the First Letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul uses precisely this word: "coming," which in Greek is "parousia" and in Latin, "adventus" (1 Thessalonians 5:23). According to the common translation of this text, Paul exhorts the Christians of Thessalonica to keep themselves irreprehensible "for" the coming of the Lord. But in the original text we read "in" the coming ("en te parousia"), as if the coming of the Lord were, more than a future event, a spiritual place in which we already walk in the present, during the wait, and in which we are perfectly vigilant in every personal dimension. In effect, this is exactly what we live in the liturgy: celebrating the liturgical seasons, we actualize the mystery -- in this case the coming of the Lord -- in such a way as to be able, so to speak, to "walk in it" toward its full realization, at the end of time, but already drawing sanctifying virtue from it from the moment that the last times have already begun with the death and resurrection of Christ.

The word that sums up this particular state in which we await something that is supposed to manifest itself but which we also already have a glimpse and foretaste of, is "hope." Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world. The whole spiritual organism of the mystical body assumes, as it were, the "color" of hope. The whole people of God begins the journey, drawn by this mystery: that our God is "the God who comes" and who calls us to come to meet him. In what way? Above all in that universal form of hope and expectation that is prayer, which finds its eminent expression in the Psalms, human words by which God himself has placed and continually places the invocation of his coming on the lips and hearts of believers.

Read the entire homily.

• “Advent is a time for being deeply shaken..." (Nov. 20, 2008)