It’s Advent! The believing community has finally started its preparation for Christmas.
Advent was never a season that caught the popular imagination. We can be so busy planning the celebration that asking what we are celebrating in the first place can get little attention.
Christmas is the day when Christians celebrate the Word made flesh; that word is Love. When Love came among us as one of us. Christmas became the affirmation of our own loving goodness. It is a lot more than a chain of obligatory traditions and foodstuffs.
This year the world witnessed the power of other words becoming flesh and were surprised. We heard many harsh words but one in particular, the adjective “crooked”, took flesh and changed the world in a way that few predicted. The power of words that take flesh should never be underestimated. Living words can build up as easily as they can destroy.
Christmas is the celebration of a one such word becoming real. It bypasses the usual humility and declares straight up that you are worth it. It is an arrogant affirmation of how great you are. If being human is good enough for God, your humanity is good enough too.
Advent is an opportunity to sit back and think of the positive words in our lives. It is a matter of particular poignancy in a time where much gossip is in writing and easily spread. Our words can cut and destroy but that is not their principal function. Only a tiny fraction of the words we speak and hear are damaging. We allow the bad ones to occupy a lot of our personal time. Unkind words cut families, communities and co-workers from each other. Trust, confidence and relationships have often perished on a single word. When a bad word takes flesh, we are expert at discussing it. Are we half as capable to think half as much about the words that do good?
The silent absence that Advent enjoys from our conscious hints at this task’s unpopularity. Why not try focussing on the good, the beautiful, the kindly and the inspiring within us? Why not indulge yourself in a whole month of this activity?
Advent is an invitation to consider your own goodness as well as that of those around you. There is a lot that is good in every life.
Spending a whole month considering the goodness around you and in you could help transform the other months positively.
Advent is a month of appreciation. Advent is also a time of fasting. Unlike Lent, there is no big focus on abstaining from food. This fast is usually of a of a different type.
We can fast from those practices that bring negativity into our lives and devour the ones that make life great. Building a positive mood around us can help us understand Christmas that little bit better. It can create a context that changes traditions into a genuine encounter with love.
Being in the company of those who love you, and forgive your shortfalls, is a joy. The Word became flesh and lived among us. That Word is as alive today as ever but we aren’t selfish enough to enjoy it. The story of the Nativity is highly complementary of our humanity. God is love and love came embodied among us, as one of us. All of us are capable of embodying that love in our lives and almost every one of us does.
Christmas is a very big, bold statement about how good and loving we are. It is no harm to spend a few weeks putting flesh to it.
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