The first Sunday of Advent is, liturgically speaking, New Year’s Day. For just as the natural world has its calendar and its seasons marking the earth’s relation to the sun, so the Church abides by her own calendar and her own seasons, her own manner of reckoning time. But the big difference is this: for the Church, it is all in relation to a Person, not a thing. The Church’s worship makes our lives revolve around Jesus.

To me, life is Christ (Phil 1:21)

“Holy Mother Church,” explains the Second Vatican Council’s document on the Sacred Liturgy, “is conscious that she must celebrate the saving work of her divine Spouse by devoutly recalling it on certain days throughout the course of the year.” Therefore, the Council Fathers add:

Within the cycle of a year she unfolds the whole mystery of Christ, from the Incarnation and Birth until the Ascension, the day of Pentecost, and the expectation of blessed hope and of the coming of the Lord. Recalling thus the mysteries of redemption, the Church opens to the faithful the riches of her Lord’s powers and merits, so that these are in some way made present for all time, and the faithful are enabled to lay hold upon them and become filled with saving grace.

Ponder that last sentence a moment longer (allow me to adapt it slightly): The Church opens to me the riches of my Lord’s powers and merits, so that these are made present to me even today, that I may lay hold of them and become filled with saving grace. How beautiful, how consoling it is to know that even though two thousand years separate us from our Lord’s earthly life, we suffer no disadvantage!

A pilgrim’s progress

One of my favorite summer vacations as a kid was when my family went to Plimoth Plantation (it retains the archaic spelling), the “living museum” where people dress up in 17^th-century clothing, speak in English accents, and churn butter. The ladies sport little bonnets and carry baskets; the men work with old-fangled tools, tend sheep, or engage in other rugged, colonial activities. It’s a dramatic, playful experience of what life would have been like in 1627. But even as a gullible little kid I didn’t think for a second that those people were actually pilgrims after 5 pm, or that anyone was going to sleep in one of those impossibly small, lumpy beds. It was a matter of pageantry and storytelling for education’s sake. And it worked masterfully. But I was not changed other than by having learned something about the past, and those actors had not changed other than by their clothing. (I recall, by the way, the year I dressed as a pilgrim myself for a school Thanksgiving party. I made a tall black hat, buckle and all, out of construction paper. Unfortunately it has not survived the years.)

But the Church is more than a historical society that reenacts past events, and in our earthly pilgrimage we do not merely learn about Christ’s ideas—we participate in the very life of Christ, we become other Christs. Jesus is not just an example to be copied, Fulton Sheen often said, but a veritable life to be lived. Indeed, just as the Holy Spirit came upon the Blessed Virgin and the Word became flesh, so the Spirit works a similar marvel within each of us through the sacraments and liturgy of the Church. We can say with Saint Paul: Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God (Gal 2:20). Each liturgical season and each feast bestows unique graces that make us grow in every way into him who is the head (Eph 4:15). And since our personal transformation into Christ is a reality that can come to ever- greater perfection, when one year is up Holy Mother Church gives us another go at it.

A new humanity, a new incarnation

Once again, then, we enter into the season of Advent—this time of holy waiting, of expectation. Why, exactly? First, we desire to be ready for Christ’s return in glory as judge of the living and the dead. Thus the collect at Mass this first Sunday begs for “the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, [we] may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.”

But we also anticipate the birth of the Infant so that our own souls can be more effectively shaped by his divine sonship. It’s true that Christ already took his seat forever at the right hand of God (Heb 10:12), but “now he comes to be born in the narrowness of our lives to be incarnate in us, to give his love to the world through us, through our flesh and blood…. The reason why we are where we are this Christmas, in this house, family, office, workroom, hospital, or camp, is because it is here in this place that Christ wants to be born, from here that he wants his life to begin again in the world” (Caryll Houselander).

Let me conclude by sharing with you what I believe to be a perfect Advent prayer from Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity: “O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, come upon me and create in my soul a kind of incarnation of the Word, that I may be another humanity for him in which he can renew his whole mystery.” It is my firm conviction that if we offer that prayer with sincerity we will have nothing to fear when we stand before our Lord at the end of our pilgrimage, for it will be Jesus meeting Jesus.