advent
01 - 12/25 /17:34
Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. The church in which I grew up dismissed Advent as a Pope-ish tradition … if it was mentioned at all. It’s not a Pope-ish tradition. Advent is an ancient, simple, attractive Christian ritual that is increasingly celebrated as believers focus upon simple participation and away from stage and performance.
Advent’s origins are opaque. This candlelight ritual arose mysteriously and organically sometime during the fifth century in far western Europe. Advent originated among recent converts to Christianity, perhaps in Normandy or the Pyrenees mountains. It arose from cultures that had been animistic; believing that material objects—hills, trees, streams, Attila the Hun’s sword of mars—house some spiritual essence that impacts humanity.
Advent’s origins are opaque. This candlelight ritual arose mysteriously and organically sometime during the fifth century in far western Europe. Advent originated among recent converts to Christianity, perhaps in Normandy or the Pyrenees mountains. It arose from cultures that had been animistic; believing that material objects—hills, trees, streams, Attila the Hun’s sword of mars—house some spiritual essence that impacts humanity.
Having exchanged animism for Christianity, these rustic Christian communities developed a simple ritual around light from five candles. That ritual proclaims that the Light of the world has come, and anticipates that Light shall return. The candlelight of the Advent wreath teaches that the human essentials of hope, joy, peace, and love radiate from the Light of the World.
The institutional church had little to do with Advent. Roman Catholics did not affirm it until the seventh century, and only then with some reluctance.
A few centuries later Pope Urban II would inaugurate violent Crusades to reclaim “the holy land.” The Crusader conquest of Jerusalem produced relics: the “true Cross”, the Roman lance that pierced Jesus’ side, bones of various saints. (The Shroud of Turin appeared centuries later.) The Roman Catholic Church accepted “the holy relics of the saints … and embrace them.”
Both Roman Catholic and Orthodox theology acknowledges that for God’s own mysterious purposes He occasionally chooses to work miracles through material items associated with the saints of the Bible. So they “venerate”, but do not worship such material objects.
Veneration of the “relics of the saints” has occasionally, uncomfortably echoed animism. How else to explain Crusaders’ carrying the “true Cross” into battle but in the expectation its material presence might bring victory?
The rustic, illiterate Christian communities in which Advent rituals arose did not venerate Advent wreaths. In contrast to relics, wreaths have always been widely re-produced by anyone, anywhere using almost any material. They housed neither essence or power. They’ve always been simple teaching tools, vehicles for declaring spiritual insights and for personal reflection.
The focus of Advent is neither the candles nor the wreath. The focus is the the Light. Light is real. Light is non-physical. Light is mystery; science explains it as both particle and wave. Light is obvious; and the darker the environment the more obvious light becomes—and the more valued.
Advent celebrations humbly proclaim that Christ is the Light of the world. Hope, joy, peace, love radiate from that Light. And it is that Light that empowers those who believe to live peacefully and love extravagantly.
Blessings,
Dan Nygaard