Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: December 09, 2018
As I continue to muse upon Advent, and pray during it, I’ve been struck by a few insights. The Catholic Church urges us to make our preparations for Christmas in a manner different from the way the rest of society and the world does. But is this such a great idea? It is an often overwhelming temptation to conform to the “ways of the world,” and to basically ignore Advent. How bad is it if we do this?
Well, a perfect observance preparing for Christmas would have some advantages. In many ways, putting off holiday gratification for the 3½ to 4 weeks of Advent enhances the celebration of Jesus’ birth. But it doesn’t happen very often. Catholics living in monasteries or seminaries or other communities which can afford to isolate themselves more-or-less from the world can get this experience. When I was in the seminary, we hardly ever sang a Christmas carol until Christmas Eve. “Finally” putting up the Christmas tree at Advent’s end meant we wouldn’t be tired of it by December 26! And observing the “12 days of Christmas” – they begin on Christmas and end on Epiphany, you know – did allow the celebrating and gift-giving to go on for a longer period of time, so that the seasonal celebrations were more leisurely and focused less on excess and more on deep joy (and deep prayer). But all this took place out of sight of the world.
Small wonder then that the “real world” believes and acts quite differently. Too many family-members and friends begin shopping before Thanksgiving. Office Christmas parties are usually over and done by mid-December. Old holiday movies are weeknight staples on television only until sports take over. Red-and-green decorations entirely overwhelm purple ones except in Catholic churches. There are some Christian denominations which skip services on Christmas entirely. It’s hard to be a Catholic living in the real world: everyone else acts differently, it seems, and largely ignores us. Has Advent become for us a private ritual, centered on the purple-and-pink candles of our little Advent wreath on the dining room table or in the Advent calendar or devotional booklet that no one but our spouse and children would ever know about?
I hope not. But I’m not suggesting that we should withdraw from the world. No, we are supposed to live in it – and evangelize it! This means embracing our Advent traditions but not becoming too rigid or obnoxious with them. If we become too obsessive with “being different from the rest of the world” we just might fail in our mission to influence others for the better. We should not spend the weeks of Advent being so “odd” in the view of our contemporaries that we don’t help them. And we shouldn’t spend the weeks after Christmas being just as “out of sync.” Others will have moved on from Christmas, and wonder why we’re still “stuck” in our own little world that’s at least two weeks behind the times, true. But we should be intriguing to them by the way we hold fast to saying “Merry Christmas!” to them all the way through to Twelfth Night.
Last week more than one visitor to the Cathedral for one of our many seasonal concerts noticed the purple of our Advent décor and remarked, in so many words, that “It’s comforting to know that the Catholic Church still waits for Christmas.” We offer a gentle reminder to everyone to slow down, and take time to realize “the reason for the season.” We accept that December is part of our society’s Christmas season even if it’s too hurried and loud. But in our simple colors and gestures of anticipation and preparation, we offer a way of transitioning not just from Advent to Christmas, but celebrating both Advent and Christmas in realistic and better ways.
Sincerely in the coming Christ Child,
Very Rev Paul D. Counce
