Advent

As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
In those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.

(Matthew 24, from the Gospel for this First Sunday of Advent)

Last month, I watched the new Netflix movie, A House of Dynamite. All of the principal characters in the film's three sequences have private lives. They are married with children (or are planning to get married), when suddenly and unexpectedly a missile appears out of the Pacific with Chicago as its target. It reminded me of how, back when I was a kid in the deep freeze of the Cold War, we regularly participated in "civil defense" drills, hiding under our desks during an imaginary nuclear attack, Yet, in between such moments of intensely focused apocalyptic expectation, we went about our ordinary lives and planned our futures, as if we fully expected the world to have a future. As it was in the days of Noah.

Sadly some recent iterations of apocalyptic seem to have an even darker dimension, as (at least according to some worried reports) some of the more contemporary generation appear to be foregoing marriage and family formation, claiming climate change and other contemporary calamities as their excuse. The calamities are legitimste, but not the excuse. Somehow some seem to have forgotten the basic imperative to keep the human story going- despite our fears and worries - as it was in the days of Noah.

All of which suggests that the Church's annual Advent message may be increasingly timely. Ostensibly the most future-oriented of seasons, Advent is in fact really a sort of stand-in for the entire Christian life, lived (as it inevitably must be) in the present - between the first coming of Christ and his hoped-for final advent. As Christians, we live our lives literally in this interval between Christmas and the end, which is what Advent is ultimately all about. We live in intensely focused apocalyptic expectation, while simultaneously preoccupied with our ordinary daily lives and planning our this-worldly futures - as it was in the days of Noah.

Indeed, as we pray every day at Mass, we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ. The point, however, is not when Jesus will come (an obsessive preoccupation found far too frequently in sectarian American Apocalyptic) but being ready for his coming – not as something to be put off to some far-off future, but as our present preoccupation. The future will indeed come – at its own time and on its own terms – but our task is the present, which is what, in fact, will determine who we will be in the future.

Obviously Advent, especially the way we celebrate it in the Church today, relies a lot on the seasonal imagery of darkness and light that defines this time of year in our northern hemisphere. Folkloric customs like Advent wreaths with their evergreens and candles all attempt to employ that natural seasonal imagery. Symbolic beings that we are, we readily respond to such signals. But we must be careful. Advent uses seasonal symbolism to make a point, but Advent is more than some sort of seasonal pageant. The Christian life is not a season, nor is it a play. The world really was in darkness before Christ – the darkness of alienation from God. and, inasmuch as so much of the world still suffers that same alienation, the darkness persists, coexisting with the light coming from Christ. But, unlike natural darkness, our world’s persistent alienation from God is not some abstract natural force.

We are the ones who have contributed – and continue to contribute - to this world’s darkness. For this reason, Advent was long rightly regarded as a penitential season. Pope Innocent III even prescribed black as the liturgical color for Advent - although violet eventually beat black to become the season’s official color. Conveniently, one and the same color can simultaneously symbolize both the purple of royalty (Christ the King coming in glory) and the violet of repentance.

The penance appropriate to Advent is, of course, what Paul commanded the Christians of Rome - to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Romans 13). So, we all need to ask ourselves, exactly what is it that keeps us in so much darkness? Why isn’t the light of Christ shining forth from us and through us to light up our communities, our country, our world? Paul’s words challenge us to be attentive to what is happening right now. Living as we do in a culture of institutionalized irresponsibility, Advent’s message is a radical wake-up call to mean what we say - really to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Our traditional account of Christ's coming into the world sets his birth during the night, the light of Christ coexisting with the darkness of a world of imperial decrees, forced migration, and. homelessness. At his final coming, of course, darkness will be destroyed. Meanwhile, however, here and now, in this interim time – between Christmas and the end – darkness and light continue to coexist, the darkness a constant challenge of a sinful present resisting Christ's brighter future

Of course, as even our annual rush to start celebrating Christmas earlier and earlier each year suggests, most of us aren’t very good at waiting. We want to know as much as possible in advance, so that we can rush into the future. The good news of the Gospel, however, is that it is precisely the present that matters. Jesus’ warning about those long ago days of Noah, reminds us how common, how universal, the experience of the present really is. We are - as we should be - still eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage – as it was in the days of Noah. The fact that the present time is limited (something one become if anything even more acutely aware of with each passing year) just makes it all the more precious, makes it matter that much more. 

Whatever surprises we may be hoping to find under the Christmas Tree this year, the coming of Christ is not one of them. Christ has already come. (If he hadn’t, we would have no Advent season to observe - let alone Christmas!) The question is whether his presence in our world today matters enough to make a difference in the way we live and what we care about – whether and how we are making the most of our limited but precious present time to become now what we hope to be when he comes again.