The history of Advent teaches us a great deal about its meaning and prepares us to observe this time with reverence and understanding. This history reveals the simultaneous importance of both penitence and hope, of both remorse and rejoicing.
Preliminary Considerations
To be serious about the Christian faith is to be serious about its history. To be sensitive to the history of God’s people is to be responsive to the movement of time. The God “in whom we live, and move, and have our being” is made known to us and interacts,s with us in history. In certain dynamic moments, God invades our time and our history and affords us a divine-human encounter, a glimpse, a momentary revelation. The ultimate act of God’s invasion into history is Jesus Christ—incarnate, crucified, dead, risen, ascended, and coming again.
It is commonplace to suggest that the essence of existence is the ability to remember; we are because we remember. As people of God, we are who we are—indeed, we recognize whose we are—precisely because we remember and celebrate those decisive times when God acted in history for us. This remembering, however, is not a simple recalling of past events. It means to capture at once the mighty acts of God in the past, to recognize what God is doing among us in the present movement, and to anticipate the continuing activity of God in the future. Liturgical, ritual remembering, therefore, looks back, looks around, and looks forward.
The early history of the liturgical year has been an area of intense investigation by scholars of Scripture, liturgy, and early Christian history. Jewish worship, still undergoing its own development in the first centuries of the common era, was anchored in the weekly rhythm of the Sabbath, but made provision for daily prayer and an annual commemorative cycle. In like manner, the early Christian community seems to have moored its worship in the weekly celebration of the Resurrection on the first day of the week, intensified by a discipline of daily prayer and enriched by the gradual development of a yearly cycle of feasts and fasts. The shape of this annual cycle developed slowly over several centuries, with many variations according to local custom. In the course of time, the variety of local traditions were combined to create the annual cycle we know today, but with continuing variants to honor local needs.
It should be noted that the liturgical feasts and seasons did not develop in the order in which they now occur in the annual cycle. Advent, for example, was one of the last seasons to take its place and has not always been considered the beginning of the liturgical year. This article will present each feast and festival in the annual cyclical order, not in order of origin and development. This procedure will be somewhat problematic at points because the roots of one liturgical feast are often closely interwoven with another feast of more ancient origin. Some degree of movement between the days and seasons is inevitable, but we shall endeavor to present the materials as clearly as possible.
Advent: Fast or Festival?
Searching the origins of Advent leads us to two principal locales: the missionary region of the church’s expansion, northern and western Europe, and the city of Rome itself. The beginnings of Advent in the missionary territory first appear near the end of the fourth century. Being influenced by the Eastern church as a result of maritime commerce along the Mediterranean, a period of penitential preparation was established in connection with the baptismal festival taking place on Epiphany, January 6, as a time of spiritual discipline for all of the faithful and of intensive catechesis for those being initiated on Epiphany. This pre-Epiphany period of fasting eventually took on the forty-day (fewer Saturdays and Sundays) length of Lent. This extended Advent back to November 11, St. Martin’s Day. It was not until the sixth century that Advent in the region became less focused on preparation for Epiphany baptism and more on preparation for the Nativity celebration. The Councils of Tours (565) and Macon (581) document a period of preparation for the Nativity lasting from November 11 to Christmas Eve. It must be noted, however, that the shift from baptismal preparation to Nativity preparation did not diminish the penitential character of Advent.
In Rome, the development of Advent was totally different. There is no trace of Advent until the sixth century. Epiphany was not a baptismal day at Rome, and therefore, Advent understood as a penitential season for baptismal preparation was unnecessary. Consequently, from its beginnings in Rome, Advent was preparation for Christmas, not Epiphany. The Roman Advent undoubtedly had roots in the December Ember Days. Gregory the Great (590–604) established four Sunday Advent masses and three Ember Day masses that utilized Advent themes. The sober nature of the Ember Days, however, never managed to stifle the spirit of the Roman Advent, which was characterized by festive and joyful preparation for the celebration of the nativity of Jesus. The divergence between the European mission territory and the city of Rome can also be noted in the dominant themes that pervade their respective Advent periods. In Rome, the focus was on joyful preparation for the historical incarnation of Christ—the point in time that marks the beginning of God’s salvatory action in Christ. In the hinterlands, the emphasis was decidedly eschatological: Advent focused not on the coming of the Christ in flesh at Bethlehem but on the final coming of the exalted Christ, the Parousia. The eschatological themes concerning the last judgment, being prepared for the second advent of the Redeemer, fit easily into the earlier missionary scheme of penitential preparation. The Advent traditions of these two regions began to converge in the eighth century, but final solutions to the divergent origins and theologies were not found until the thirteenth century. Even then, the solutions were little more than conflated compromises. In the early twelfth century, Roman custom was prevalent. The liturgy was festive and adorned in white and gold. The Gloria in Excelsis, the church’s great song of praise, was being sung, and the joyful Alleluia, often suppressed during periods of penitence, remained in place. By the end of the century, however, the pendulum had shifted. The liturgy was stripped of its festal elements, the Gloria was silenced, the color was penitential black or one of its derivatives, and the mood was decidedly more somber.
In contemporary practice, even with the immense amount of liturgical scholarship and renewal in the last century, we still have an Advent of difficult dimensions. Richard C. Hoefler calls Advent a “season under stress” and writes, “In the orderly parade of Sundays and Seasons of the Church year, Advent seems somehow always to be out-of-step …. Even the most cursory study of this schismatic season will quickly reveal the reason. Advent is caught in the collision of conflicting interpretations and practices.”
The three-year ecumenical lectionary, adopted in one of several revisions by many churches in the United States and Canada, including several churches that historically have not been liturgical in their orientation, has dealt with the Advent problem in a helpful manner. The readings from the Bible, particularly those from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels for the final Sundays after Pentecost, emphasize eschatological themes and come to a powerful climax on the last Sunday after Pentecost, observed by many churches as the festival of Christ the king. This focus brings the liturgical cycle to a grand climax as the church anticipates Christ’s second coming. The readings from the Gospels for the first Sunday of Advent create a bridge that continues the eschatological emphasis. The Gospels for the second and third Sundays present the preparatory ministry of John the Baptizer, while the fourth Sunday’s Gospel presents the Annunciation. Thus we have two themes—our anticipation of Christ’s Second Advent yet to be and his First Advent in Bethlehem—coming together.
Theologically and pastorally, Advent has its foundation in Christian hope. The basis of our hope is God’s coming among us in Jesus Christ. As Hoefler writes, “We are saved and redeemed not because we have successfully made the effort to come to him, but because he has made the surprising effort to come to us.” For centuries, the people of Israel awaited their Anointed One, the Messiah. That he would come and release them from the bondage of displacement and initiate a new beginning in their lives was only a small part of the complex of hope that laid heavily on their whole being as God’s people. It was their hope, for all that, his coming could mean, that gave meaning to their existence.
For the church, the coming of Christ means still more. In the coming of Christ as “the Word made flesh,” our hope is not diminished, but it is intensified. We do not feel relaxed because of this presence, but instead, we experience a holy joy, a peaceful excitement about God’s presence in our lives and in the world. The intensification of our hope expresses itself in the daily, thankful experience of Christ’s presence in our lives and in our continual desire for the day on which Christ will come again to us in glory. This sense of expectation is well expressed in this passage from the litany of the Moravian Church:
Lord, for Thy coming us prepare;
May we, to meet Thee without fear,
At all times ready be:
In faith and love preserve us sound;
O let us day and night be found
Waiting with joy to welcome Thee.
Our lives are shaped by Advent hope. “Christ has come and his coming prepares us for his coming in glory and his continual coming to us in Word and Sacrament. God gives us in Advent the story of his coming, and that story prepares us to receive him whenever he confronts our lives.”
Advent will continue to be a difficult season to manage. The conflicts that emerge will continue to plague pastors, musicians, and parish liturgy committees. But the difficulties that are present may instead be opportunities pregnant with possibility. It should not be our intention to allow Advent to be overcome by Christmas. Regardless of where a congregation enters into Advent in a given year, there is entirely too much in it, biblically, theologically, historically, pastorally, and musically, to give it up before its time. Yet there is little use in breaking our backs, let alone our spirits, to make Advent a little Lent in December. Everyone needs a pause from the frenzy of December to reflect and pray. Everyone also needs to rejoice for “our redemption draweth nigh!”