Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Here is a question about Advent, the season preparing for Christmas that begins on December 2:  Is it possible to spiritually prepare to celebrate Christmas in our hectic and consumeristic climate? How can we create some interior space to welcome the Christ-child or will our hearts and minds be overfull like the inn at Bethlehem in the original Nativity of our Lord? 

The word “advent” has a Latin root meaning “coming”. The pre-Christmas season of Advent is a time of preparation to celebrate the first coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas: “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father ’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14).

We have some traditional practices to help prepare to celebrate this joyful feast marking the reality that heaven came to earth that first Christmas. 

In the church at Mass on the Sundays in Advent, priests and deacons wear purple vestments for three out of the four Sundays. There are also three purple candles in a traditional Advent wreath that decorate the sanctuary of the parish church and many family tables. 

Purple is a penitential colour, expressing sorrow and contrition. It is a long-standing tradition for Catholics to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation (also known as Confession or the Sacrament of Penance) sometime in the weeks prior to Christmas.

Parishes often engage a speaker to give an Advent Retreat to help parishioners prepare for Christmas. There are many print resources available for private use with a daily reading from the scriptures and a reflection that people use as part of their personal prayers to help them focus on the meaning of the season. 

Some families use together Advent prayer booklets at dinnertime containing a short prayer to pray together as they light one of the candles of their Advent wreath. 

Families with little children often purchase a daily Advent Calendar where the children can take turns opening a window each day revealing a picture or message on the calendar. 

The Christmas nativity scene or crèche, promoted by Saint Francis of Assisi hundreds of years ago, is a popular devotion. Some crèches have special meaning for families, having been passed on from earlier generations. One practice has the figures of the three Magi (or wise men) processing across the living room, each day moved a little closer to the stable and crib containing Christ!

These and other practices are ways of reminding us that of the miracle of Christmas: that God so loved the world that he sent us his only Son, like us in every way but sin, to bring us back into the intimacy of God’s loving embrace. 

It is possible to get caught up in the round of parties, decorating the house, buying the perfect present, sending cards (ecards, traditional ones or carefully posed family pictures), and the general busyness of the weeks before the 25th of December that we forget that for Christians “Jesus is the reason for the season”. 

This Advent let us adopt more attentively one or more of these traditional practices – a little focused prayer on the meaning of Christmas, a few moments each day spent with the crèche, an Advent wreath on the dinner table with four candles and a moment of prayer, penitential preparation ending with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a special contribution to supporting the poor in our community or something else aimed at injecting a little space into our crowded lives so that the Christ-child may find a welcome in our hearts, lives and families.

God bless you.

✠Terrence Prendergast, S.J.
Bishop of Alexandria-Cornwall