The Catholic Standard & Times - Guest Columnist - Advent’s ‘wake-up call’

Advent’s ‘wake-up call’

Part III (of a four-part series)

Guest Columnist
By Susan Brinkmann

A new joy dawns in the third week of Advent. The Church lifts its penitential purple for a moment, and clothes herself in hopeful shades of rose on what is called Gaudete Sunday.

“Today, the Church is full of joy, and the joy is greater than it was,” writes Abbot Gueranger, O.S.B., in the first volume of his book, “The Liturgical Year.”

This is a time to celebrate not just the coming of Christ on Christmas day, but the coming of Christ into our own lives, and the coming of Christ at the end of time.

“In light of the vigilant waiting for the second coming [of Christ] each Advent is an opportunity,” said Sister J. Sheila Galligan, I.H.M., professor of theology at Immaculata University.

“Each Advent is a ‘wake-up’ time,” she said. And that “wake-up time” has several aspects.

“The first is linked with the need to wake up to the reason for the season — Christ, who came to save us from sin,” Sister Sheila said. We also “wait for the penetrating light of God’s judgment on sin, which will shine brightly on … the day of His second coming.

“Advent is also the time to wake up to the presence of sin, and the ongoing need for daily conversion,” she added.

Two Biblical characters of Advent, St. John the Baptist and Mary, help to focus our attention on the need to remain vigilant, Sister Sheila said.

“Each of them, in their own way, speaks to us of different kinds of vigilant waiting and a waking up,” she said. “John the Baptist proclaimed with compelling power, ‘Repent — change your ways.’ John’s fiery words are a wake-up call. We must name and claim our sinfulness [and] prepare to receive God’s mercy, the Savior.

“Mary placed her whole trust in God, exemplified in her ‘yes’ to the angel’s invitation,” Sister Sheila continued. “It is interesting, then, to note Luke’s brief, almost abrupt statement: ‘And then the angel left her.’

“Mary had to wake up to the mixture of mystery and meaning — the practical implications of her ‘yes.’ As the faithful, faith-filled mother of Jesus, she committed herself, during her Advent of nine months, to vigilant waiting, to exercising a patient hope,” she said.

There is also glory associated with the final coming of the King.

“I think of this, in light of the final ‘wake up,’ hopefully, as ‘wake up in heaven,’” Sister Sheila said.

“Advent nudges us to remember more frequently Christ’s promise of glory. Advent’s focus on the second coming points us to eternity — the ‘eternal weight of glory,’ which is our eternal destiny.

“C. S. Lewis suggests that this experience will be a ‘welcome into the heart of things [when] the door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last,’ she said.

“Quite paradoxically, then, I think God is ‘waiting for us’ to finally come into His glorious presence — where we shall ‘wake up’ to His gracious greeting: ‘Welcome home.’”