While today is the fourth and final Sunday of this Advent, we still have almost an entire week to go before Christmas. Because the beginning of the season of Christmas is on Sunday this year, Advent is as long as it can possibly be. By contrast, next year Advent will be as short as it can be, when the Fourth Sunday of Advent is immediately followed by the beginning of Christmas at sundown on the same day. “Kind of cool to know,” you might be saying to yourself, “but so what?”
Well, the “so what” takes the form of a question: How are you going to “use” this final week of Advent? Will it be all hustle and bustle, flurry and rush, or will you dedicate some time, even if just a little each day, to prepare yourself for Christ’s coming? This “time gift” is a great grace.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote of Christ’s three advents, or comings.1 Advent does not just prepare us for the celebration of Jesus’ birth or even for his return at the end of time- though, as Christians, our lives are dedicated to awaiting “the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”2
While a relatively short liturgical season, Advent has two distinct emphases. For the first two weeks, Advent extends the Solemnity of Christ the King, exhorting us to live our lives in readiness for Christ’s glorious return, which can happen at any time. Beginning with Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, the season pivots, drawing our attention to the Lord’s birth in Bethlehem. According to St. Bernard, these are the first two advents.
What is Christ’s third advent? Well, the Lord’s third coming happens between his first and second. It is when Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is born in you, comes to dwell in you, and lives through you, through us, his verum corpus, his true Body, the Church.
While our reading from Isaiah and our Gospel today clearly focus on the Lord’s first advent, our reading of the beginning of Saint Paul’s letter to the Christians of ancient Rome addresses his third advent: Through Jesus Christ, the man from Tarsus wrote of himself and his fellow witnesses to Christ’s resurrection “we have received the grace of apostleship.” “Apostle,” in Greek, refers to one who is sent. In a Christian context, an apostle is one who has encountered the Risen Lord and who is sent bear witness. This grace is given, according to Paul, “to bring about the obedience of faith, for the sake of [Christ’s] name…” Along with Christians of first-century Rome, we, too, “are called to belong to Jesus Christ… called to be holy."3
More than any other way, you bear witness to Jesus Christ by how you live your daily life. To be holy is to be like Jesus, who is Emmanuel, God with us. The Holy Spirit is the mode of this third advent. In other words, just like the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ comes to be in you and manifests himself through you by the power of the Holy Spirit.
This why we pray the venerable prayer Veni sancte Spiritus, veni per Mariam (Come Holy Spirit, come through Mary). As some of you probably noticed, our Collect, or opening prayer for Mass, is the same prayer that concludes the Angelus. By prayer the Angelus each day, we call to mind the amazing event of the Incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin.
Our Gospel tells of the first of four dreams through which God made known his will to Saint Joseph. In this dream, an angel is instrumental in helping Joseph resolve his serious dilemma concerning Mary, his betrothed, who unexpectedly turned up pregnant with a child he knew wasn’t his. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” the angel tells him “for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”4 When he awoke, Joseph did as the angel instructed him and took the pregnant young woman into his home as his wife.
“Obedience,” Pope Francis noted, “made it possible for [St. Joseph] to surmount his difficulties and spare Mary.”5 You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of the “obedience of faith,” about which Saint Paul wrote than Joseph’s response to learning God’s will for him. It is one thing to know God’s will and quite another to do it.
Maybe that’s a focus for reflection for this “extra” week of Advent: discerning God’s will for your life and committing, with God’s help, to doing it. This seems especially timely as an old year gives way to a new one. I don’t know about you, but Christmas (New Year’s Day is the seventh day of Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God) always gives me genuine hope. Genuine hope, because it is a gift from God, the flower of faith, reaches far beyond any human-generated optimism. Optimism can and sometimes does lead to disappointment. Whereas hope begins with disappointment. One can easily imagine the disappointment Joseph felt upon learning of the unexpected pregnancy of his betrothed.
As we sing in the first verse of the beautiful Christmas Carol, O Holy Night:
Long lay the world in sin and error piningMy dear sisters and brothers, as we read in the Letter to the Colossians: “it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.”7 It is Christ in you that enables you to not only discern but to do God’s will. Holiness consists of doing God’s will.
Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn6
1 Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings, Wednesday, First Week of Advent. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Sermon 5.↩
2 Roman Missal, Order of Mass, sec. 125.↩
3 Romans 1:5-7.↩
4 Matthew 1:20-21.↩
5 Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde, sec. 3.↩
6 John S. Dwight, Placide Cappeau, Adolphe-Charles Adam. O Holy Night. Genius Lyrics. Accessed 15 December 2022.↩
7 Colossians 1:27.↩
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