I am very happy to say I have heard that greeting around our parish this year. Several people have greeted me with Happy Advent and Claudia’s thoughtful sermon opened Advent with that greeting.
I have even been saying it on the streets and around the office and in my apartment building.
You can even have some fun with it. When my secular friends look at me with total incomprehension, I explain that Advent is the Christian version of the State Lottery, and that I forget how many mega millions it’s worth by now, and as they say you never know. You know, how around mid-month they show Rowan Williams spinning the wheel and then the Prince reaches in and pulls out the winning ticket?
To Protestant friends who do not approve of Advent or do not know about it I say, don’t you remember how in the Book of Revelation it says that those who do not keep an Advent wreath in the home will inherit the Fifteenth Plague of the Macedonians? The one that makes the ones in Exodus look mild by comparison? What do you mean you don’t have an Advent Wreath at home? Friend, I am going to stay far away from you this season! That gets them really interested, and if they say where does it say that in Revelation I just say, do the morning readings this Advent and you’ll find out soon enough.
But my Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, and fellow Anglicans – that’s you – know all about Advent. They just are not quite sure “Happy” is the adjective to go with it. I have heard several people wonder aloud: is that the proper greeting? Perhaps Happy and Advent do not really go together. Perhaps we should simply say Blessed Advent, the way many people will say Blessed lent.
Well, I see what they mean, but I will argue for “Happy.” I have been going around saying it to people everywhere and I urge you to do the same.
In the first place I find it natural to say happy advent because I happen to like advent. I even like Lent. And it is not because I am a serious and studious person; I just pretend to be that when I have to. I like Advent because it gives us permission to be centered and quiet in the middle of an off-center and noisy season. I think of it as a month’s-long virtual retreat. I love retreats but I don’t avail myself of them nearly often enough; somehow I just don’t get around to them. Well, Advent is like a retreat that gets around to us. Observant Christians can’t avoid it, and who would want to?
The timing could not be better.
Our Christian calendar is a rhythmic thing. Some say it is a nice alternating of feast and fast, feast and fast, but it’s really more complicated and more interesting than that. That would be just a sort of tick-tock. What we have really is a complicated set of rhythms–what I think in music is called polyrhythm. There is the very low low of Lent and the very high high of Easter, there is the different, warm high note of Christmas and then the reprise of that, which is Epiphany; and there is the long rich mid-tone of Pentecost, and through it all there are those saints’ days and special moments that make a clear counterpoint to whatever the seasonal mood is. The day after Christmas is the very somber Feast of St. Stephen; halfway through Lent comes the rollicking glory of St. Patrick’s Day and the mellow glory of the Annunciation. Just last week we opened Advent with the solemn lighting of the First candle and the collect for light and a thoughtful sermon by Claudia; and the very next day we broke the mood with the Feast of St. Andrew. That felt like syncopation to me.
There is always the question of how Penitential Advent should be. I suppose the answer is not as penitential as Lent but more so than any other time. After all we do have the yearly appearance of John the Baptist today, with his somber Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
But you know I don’t find him unpleasant at all. I think the desert is a refreshing place, it is part of that virtual retreat. And his message is welcome. Consider this saying:
Abba Pastor said: Just as bees are driven out by smoke, and their honey is taken away from them, so a life of ease drives out the fear of the Lord from our souls and takes away all our good works.
Can you see how sharp that saying is? Usually people say that a life of ease is sweet. This desert dweller turns that around: he says ease is like smoke that drives out the bees so the bear can steal their honey.
In other words a life of ease gets in the way of the true sweet things in life. I don’t mind at all being told to repent twice a year. Think of it as re-adjusting, as tuning your thoughts and your act. The word repentance is really metanoia, and that doesn’t really mean “feel wretched about your sins and stop them.” It means that if you are involved in notorious wickedness but I don’t think you are. The word actually means “change your mind.” Now usually when we say I have changed my mind all we mean is I have changed my opinion. Metanoia is much better than that: it means alter the way your mind works, change it.
Secondly, the thesis, the theme, the subject, of Advent is preparation. And just as the anticipation of something dreadful is very often as bad as the event itself, so the preparation for something joyous is usually itself part of the joy. I like the way the rituals of Advent–lighting the wreath every night at dinner time, saying the prayer for light over it every day, reading the Book of Revelation though at Morning Prayer every day, singing the great Advent hymns every Sunday– blend in very well with the gift-shopping and card-sending and semester-ending things I also have on the agenda for the 12th month. They are all of them about preparing for things: about getting ready.
Our faith is very time-conscious. We do not live for the moment nor do we dwell in the past nor do we hinge everything on a future; we keep our eyes on all three. As Gregory of Rome says, we always should think about where our soul has been, where it will one day be, where it is now, and where it is not: ubi erat erit est and non est – as he says it more neatly. All year long we are staring deeply into the past in one moment then far into the future at the next and then doing everything we can to live in the present in the moment following that. We say in the heart of the Mass Christ has died Christ is risen Christ will come again.
This is our season when we concentrate on the looking-ahead. Even when we look back in our lessons, we look back on people when they were looking ahead. We heard that radiant reading from Baruch: Arise O Jerusalem stand upon the height, look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them.
And the Psalm: restore our fortunes O Lord like the watercourses of the Negev, those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy, those who go out weeping carrying the seed will come again with joy shouldering the sheaves.
Those are irresistible. What a joy to look back and see our forebears looking ahead–ahead to a moment that is still to come. Think that through and I think you’ll feel a rich queasiness, a little sacred terror, the kind of fear that makes you feel just a little more alive.
We are preparing for joy and that itself is joyous. The obligatory cards and gifts and e mails become a lot less of a nuisance when they become part of the preparation not just for Christmas day, but for the renewal of the Nativity and for the second Advent of Christ, when I the words of the collect he will come in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead.
But my third reason is the most important for me. It is simply this. Happiness, in our faith, isn’t something that happens to us. It is something we are supposed to cultivate. St. Paul tells us to be joyful.
This is very hard for those who accept our prevailing culture as the truth. Happiness there is about things that come and go–it is about feeling elated, or pleasurable sensations, or good fortune, or success in one’s work, or love, or being entertained. Now there’s nothing wrong with any of those. They are what we would call festive things. When we wish someone Merry Christmas, these are the kinds of things we mean in fact.
When I say Happy Advent obviously that’s not what I mean. I do not mean go for the pathetic pre-Christmas parties or the faux-Christmas treacle on television or the shopping orgies. I recommend all the seasonal things–the greenery and the lights and wreaths and so on, but I urge you to think of these as Yuletide again, and I urge you not to spend any money on anything involving Jim Carrey.
Most people do think that happiness is something that happens to us–that we cannot really control it, that it’s all in God’s hands or the Fates or whatever they believe in. These are the same majority who thinks Love happens to you–that you fall into it, as you might fal off a cliff if you aren’t careful.
Christian happiness is like Christian love–it is up to you. Otherwise Paul could not order us to do it. Everybody knows how this works at Christmas–we say “make merry” we say “be festive.” But most do not know Advent happiness. Try it. I wish it upon you. I wish you would go home and set up your Advent wreath, I wish you would enjoy the lessons every day this season, I wish you would give up something this Advent just as you do every Lent, I wish you would wish everyone else all the joys of this sober, quiet, peaceful, centered, wonderful season.
That is what I have in mind when I do wish you a Happy Advent. And I do urge you to wish others the same good wish. Oh, and by the way. When very soon people start saying Merry Christmas prematurely, just continue to say Happy Advent in return. They will get the point. Many of them will actually correct themselves. Others will actually ask you what you are talking about, and that will give you an opportunity to give someone the gift of Advent.
But when someone says that lamest phrase of all, Happy Holidays, you know what to do. Tell them it says in the Book of Revelation that anyone who says Happy Holidays instead of the real thing will suffer the fourteenth plague of the Macedonians. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Even if she were to say Happy Holidays.
