O COME, O COME, EMMANUEL!

Dear Friends in Christ,

I have been amused, as I often am in late fall, by the way in which in America the Christmas season seems to begin the day after Thanksgiving and end on December 25.  From a commercial point of view, this makes perfect sense because the purpose of Christmas, after all, is the buying of presents – the more expensive the better. But, of course, something is lost when we buy into this way of thinking about Christmas. Not only do we lose the Twelve Days of Christmas, from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, we also lose the wonderful season of Advent.

In Advent, God calls us to remember and to hope. To remember the promises of God to the people of Israel and to hope for their fulfillment in human history. During the final week of Advent, from December 17 to December 23, the medieval Church focused on those promises and our hope by singing the “O Antiphons” at Evening Prayer. (We have all of them together in Hymn 56,  “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”) Each of the antiphons holds up one particular title for Israel’s hoped-for Messiah:

v     The Wisdom from on high who orders all things rightly;

v     The Lord of might who appeared to Moses and gave the Law to God’s people;

v     The Branch of Jesse’s tree who frees God’s people from tyranny;

v     The Key of David who opens the way to life in God’s Kingdom;

v     The Rising Sun, who enlightens those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death;

v     The King whom all peoples desire and who binds all humankind together with bonds of love;

v     Emmanuel, who is God with us.

Advent is a season during which God invites us to nurture this hope in our hearts, hope not only for ourselves but for all people and for all of creation.  One only has to turn on the news or pick up the newspaper to know that the world does “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” We don’t need more presents, more stuff. We need God’s wisdom, God’s law written in our hearts, the perfect freedom that comes from serving God, new life in God’s kingdom, light in our darkness, the overcoming of divisions in our world. We need God to be with us, and God is and always will be with us in Jesus, the Incarnate Word, Emmanuel.

I pray that our hearts may be open in these busy days, open to God’s promises, open to that hope which God planted in the hearts of God’s people centuries ago. May we keep Advent as a season of hope and come to see all our hopes realized in the Holy Child of Bethlehem.

Your brother and priest,

Daniel