The Fourth Sunday of Advent

It is not yet Christmas. But is also the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says: "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5). Advent is a time of waiting.Our whole life, however, is Advent - that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: "On earth peace to those on whom God's favor rests." Learn to wait, because He has promised to come. "I stand at the door..." We however call to him: "Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!" Amen.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst, from Waiting for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas

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First Sunday of Advent

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace

Broken, and so we must

Love where we cannot trust, and

Trust where we cannot know

And must await the wayward-coming grace

That joins both the living and the dead,

Taking us where we would not go–

Into the boundless dark.

When what was made has been unmade

The Maker comes to His work.

(Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1999)

There's something about the boundless dark of the Advent season. It's not a dark that will stay, "for the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing" (TS Eliot). But it's not light yet.

And so we wait. Come, Lord Jesus.

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Advent: In the Waiting

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away [...]

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

Of death and birth.

~ T.S. Eliot, No. 2 of the Four Quartets

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Second Sunday of Advent

"Consider how much the Advent season holds, how it it breaks into our lives with images of light and dark, first and last things, watchfulness and longing, origin and destiny."

Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk

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First Sunday of Advent

VENI veni, Emmanuel
captivum solve Israel,
qui gemit in exsilio,
privatus Dei Filio.


Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel!

Veni, veni O Oriens,
solare nos adveniens,
noctis depelle nebulas,
dirasque mortis tenebras.

Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel!

O COME, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that morns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel,
to thee shall come Emmanuel!

O come, Thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death's dark shadow put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel,
to thee shall come Emmanuel!

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