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Advent Endings
One of my young students, when seeing her mother had displayed their manger scene, cried out in unquenchable joy, “Look, it’s the Jesus Farm!”
When I was a child, Christmas too was a really big deal, but as an adult, I find that Advent now means more to me. Although Advent is a lead-up to Christ’s birth, it is not only a time to prepare for the holiday — buying gifts, decorating trees, sending cards (as if I have ever been the kind of person who could manage Christmas cards), but Advent is also a time to prepare for Christ’s coming again: “Lo! he comes with clouds descending.”[1]
In his Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes: “What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from.” (58)[2] Advent prepares us for our end that is also our beginning: for our death to this current age and for our resurrection in Christ.
The first Sunday of Advent begins the Church’s liturgical year. We celebrate the Incarnation of Christ’s birth and watch for His return. Our beginning looks to our ending that is a new beginning in Christ and new creation. Sleeper’s wake indeed!
Life is often like this. What events are both beginnings and endings? The loss of a job and the beginning of a new career. The birth of a child and the loss of our adolescence. The death of one’s parents and the acceptance of one’s role as new matriarch or patriarch of a family.
In reading Paul Dominiak’s book The Love that Moves the Sun: Advent Hope in a Time of Crisis, I discovered that it was once common to reflect upon “the four last things” in Advent: Heaven, Hell, death and judgement.[3] Aside from Heaven, that’s pretty grim for a season of office parties, Salvation Army Santas, seasonal beers and the competition with one’s neighbors to have the largest inflatable reindeer.
But then, I remember Advent shares its liturgical color, violet, with Lent. In our own Anglican tradition, the color for Advent is often Sarum blue to memorialize the Virgin Mary: “be it unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38, KJV) Like Lent, Advent is a season to reflect and await. This Advent, let me do more than honor the birth of Christ and the coming Christmas. Let me await my end in Christ’s “long-expected”[4] return: “In my beginning is my end.” “In my end is my beginning.”[5]
[1] Wesley, Charles. “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending.” The Hymnal 1982. Church Publishing Inc.,1985.
[2] Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. Harcourt Brace, 1943.
[3] Dominiak, Paul. The Love that Moves the Sun: Advent Hope in a Time of Crisis. Canterbury Press, 2024.
[4] Wesley, Charles. “Come, Thou long-expected Jesus.” The Hymnal 1982. Church Publishing Inc.,1985.
[5] Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. Harcourt Brace, 1943.
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