“Lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”

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Abstract: This article presents a detailed perspective on the season of Advent, explaining that it’s more than just a remembrance of Christ’s historical birth. The author argues that its true depth lies in it being a preparation for the coming of Christ into individual hearts (Parousia), which offers courage and hope amidst present global turmoil. The Advent liturgy is referenced through various texts to illustrate this viewpoint. Ultimately, the key message helps believers align with the Church’s belief of the triumphant return of Christ. Photo from WikiCommons. This is an expanded and updated version of an article originally published at LifeSiteNews in December 2022, which was more categorical in places than this updated version.

We all know that Advent is a period of hope and preparation which begins four Sundays before Christmas.

But we don’t often consider the hope that this holy season can give to us today – in our period of ecclesiastical chaos and the growing global tyranny.

In this series of essays, I want to show that the hope of Advent is about more than imagining ourselves into the period before the historical birth of Christ in Bethlehem – and also about more than his birth into our hearts by grace (supremely important though this is).

There is another aspect to this hope which can provide sure reasons for living free from fear, even today.

For what, exactly, are we preparing in Advent?

There are several ways of answering the question above.

One way is to refer to devotional traditions and practice; another is to look at the texts of the Liturgy. There is a great deal of crossover between the two – but there are some significantly different emphases.

We would be forgiven for thinking that Advent is mainly about the mysteries that lead up to the Nativity – such as the Annunciation, Our Lady’s (and maybe even Our Lord’s) expectation over nine months, the journey to Bethlehem, and so on.

There are many beautiful and holy practices for Advent that draw on this spirit – such as the preparation of a manger for the coming Christ-child, with children adding a piece of straw for each good deed. No doubt this is an especially important time for teaching our children about our holy religion – and for creating memories which they will cherish forever. I certainly follow such practices with my children.

But treating Advent too exclusively in this way can flatten it into a sort of “make-believe,” in which we pretend that we are living in the time before Christ’s birth – and try, by this means, to create an atmosphere of preparation and expectation for something that was realised long ago. There is nothing wrong with such “make-believe” and it can be a spur for prayer and meditation. But if this is too exclusively the focus, then we are liable to miss out on the riches Advent offers.

This is mitigated by casting the season also as a preparation for Christ being born into the soul of each individual Christian – the very purpose of our life on earth.

These two aspects of Advent, and these two comings of Christ (in history and in our souls) are commonly treated in classic works of devotion and on the Church’s year (such as Dom Columba Marmion’s Christ in His Mysteries – review here). No doubt many Christians have profitably spent many Advents focusing on these two aspects, and will continue to do so.

But in these same classic books, we also find a third coming, or advent, of Christ presented as the object of our hope and preparation. This third is the “Parousia,” or Christ’s coming in majesty at the end of the world, to judge the living and the dead. Dom Prosper Guéranger writes in his description of “the mystery of Advent”:

“[The Church aspires after a third coming, which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. […] She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse.”[1]

But aside from the Gospel of the First Sunday of Advent, this third coming (which, of course, we would normally call “the second coming” in other contexts) barely figures in our observation of Advent. It barely figures in the carols we sing (though it is there – consider Joy to the World and Once in Royal David’s City), or the prayers we pray at home. It certainly does not feature in the stories we tell our children during Advent.

Rather, we all typically focus on the history of Christmas, perhaps with a minor application to Christ’s coming into our own individual hearts, and perhaps some cursory consideration of “the four last things.”

The question we must ask ourselves is: Are we missing out on something that the Church wants for us?

The liturgical texts

It is famously held that the law of prayer determines the law of belief – which in turn determines the law of how we live our lives.

Pius XI explicitly draws our attention to this in his encyclical on the Kingship of Christ:

“[P]eople are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year — in fact, forever.

“The church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.”[2]

For these reasons, the liturgy is a key means by which we find the mind of the Church about the season of Advent, and how we should mark it. The twentieth century theologian Fr Johannes Pinsk – on whose ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’ much of this essay is drawn – writes:

“[I]t is not the individual who celebrates Advent, but the Church as such. Our celebration of Advent is possible only to the extent that we take part in the celebration of the Church.”[3]

The Church has celebrated this season in a particular way for over a thousand years, and it is important for us to enter into this through considering her liturgical texts, and meditating on them. If we do not do this, we run the risk of missing something rich and beautiful about the season.

If we turn to the Roman liturgy, we may be surprised at how prominently the Parousia seems to figure in the texts, chants and prayers. The nineteenth-century biblical expositor Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ wrote in his collection of Advent sermons on the end times:

“The Church at this time, my brethren in Jesus Christ, is training us to prepare ourselves more particularly to celebrate with joy and thankfulness the great feast of Christmas, the commemoration of our Lord’s first coming into the world, in poverty, in suffering, in gentleness; in benignity and humility. But she is led by a heavenly instinct to, do this, in great measure, by means of considerations concerning our Blessed Lord’s future coming in glory, majesty, and power.

“These two thoughts seem, as it were, to require, each the other, as its own fitting and natural supplement.”[4]

Fr Coleridge suggests that the Church wants us always to remember that the sweet baby of Bethlehem, whose Nativity we are about to celebrate, is the same Judge who “is to come hereafter, terrible to His enemies, a fire going before His face, heaven and earth rolling up like a scroll before Him, ‘with the voice of an Archangel and the trumpet of God’ calling on the dead to arise and come to Judgment.”[5]

And yet he also suggests that she does not want us to consider “the great and terrible day of the manifestation of the Son of Man as our Judge, without remembering that it is our own blessed and most loving Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem, the Boy of Nazareth […] Who is to sit on that great white throne and call His people before Him.”[6]

This duality is indeed clear in the Gospel of the First Sunday of Advent – which flows so seamlessly on from that of the previous Sunday. Our Lord warns that before he comes again, men will be “withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world.”

Is this not a fitting description of the world today, in the face of quarterly new global crises that spell the end of civilisation, and the pervasive “black pill” addiction? But rather than telling us to fear, Our Lord gives us words of encouragement and hope:

“When these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”

Similarly, in the Epistle St Paul tells us:

“It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believe. The night is passed and the day is at hand. Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”

These readings – and the First Sunday’s other propers – are sometimes treated as if they are anomalies in a season which is otherwise focused on the historical birth of Christ. But if we listen carefully to what else is read and sung throughout in this period, we may be further surprised at what we find.

The other liturgical propers

For example, the first responsory of the first lesson at Matins for the first Sunday of Advent reads:

“I look from afar, and behold I see the Power of God, coming like as a cloud to cover the land with the hosts of his People: Go ye out to meet him and say: ‘Tell us if thou art he, that shalt reign over God’s people Israel.’

“All ye that dwell in the world, all ye children of men, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, go ye out to meet him and say, ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.’”[7]

This occurs throughout – nor is it limited to the First Sunday. Consider the third Responsory, Wednesday in the second Week of Advent:

“Behold, the Lord cometh down with glory, and His host is with Him, to visit His people in peace, and to establish them in life everlasting.”[8]

The first Responsory, Third Sunday of Advent:

“Behold, the Lord shall appear upon a white cloud, and ten thousand of His saints with Him; and He shall have on His vesture, and on His thigh a name written King of kings, and Lord of lords. He shall appear and not lie; though He tarry, wait for Him, because He will surely come.”[9]

Pinsk gives us text after text emphasising a manifestation of glory and power:

“Behold, the Lord will come, and His saints with Him. In that day there will be a great light in Him.”

“Christ our King is coming. He whom John has designated as the Lamb who is to come. Before Him kings will shut their mouths. It is to Him that the nations will address their prayers.”

“Behold, the Lord our Protector will come, the Holy One of Israel, wearing on His head the royal crown. And he will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.”

Pinsk claims that of the 108 Advent responsories in the Roman Breviary, only 17 speak directly and explicitly about the historical birth of Christ. He writes that very few texts in the Missal refer directly (or solely) to this historical birth – and that “all the others concern the sovereign ruler who is to come, and to his kingdom.” Even the liturgical references to “the Child” or “the Lamb” refer to future glory – not excepting the words of the Angel Gabriel to Our Lady, read on the Fourth Sunday:

“[T]he Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father: and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever.” (Luke 1.32)

We could also consider the texts of the Advent hymns, sung each day in the Divine Office in Advent. While each one begins with words referring the historical birth of Christ, each one also contains at least one stanza referring to his glorious future coming – and could easily have been used in the feast of Christ the King:

So when before the judgment-seat
The sinner hears his doom,
And when a voice divinely sweet
Shall call the righteous home.[10]

So when next he comes with glory,
Wrapping all the earth in fear,
May he then as our defender
Of the clouds of heaven appear.[11]

At whose dread name, majestic now,
All knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
And things celestial Thee shall own,
And things terrestrial, Lord alone.

O Thou whose coming is with dread
To judge and doom the quick and dead,
Preserve us, while we dwell below,
From every insult of the foe.[12]

Of such texts as the above, Dom Prosper Guéranger says:

“[T]he day of this His last coming to her will be a day of terror. The Church frequently trembles at the very thought of that awful judgement in which all mankind is to be tried […]

“Not that she fears for herself, since she knows that this day will for ever secure for her the crown, as being the bride of Jesus; but her maternal heart is troubled at the thought that, on the same day, so many of her children will be on the left hand of the Judge […]

“This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent, so frequently speaks of the coming of Christ as a terrible coming, and selects from the Scriptures those passages which are most calculated to awaken a salutary fear in the mind […]”[13]

Reading these liturgical commentators, and having surveyed these texts (and we could open the liturgical books at random and find the same spirit throughout), we could ask ourselves some questions.

Are the burning, urgent desires expressed in the liturgical texts above solely aimed at “going back in time”, in the interest of galvanising religious sentiment – such as picturesque excitement about a feast for the sake of our children?

Not that there would be anything wrong with such an aim: not at all. It is a charming and cherished aspect of Advent, and we all love it.

But is it the only aim of the Advent liturgy? Is it even the main aim that we find expressed? Pinsk gives his answer:

“All that would remain in this case would be nothing more than an unreal atmosphere of ‘as if’, alien to reality. On the other hand, if Advent is conceived as the Church conceives it, then it is a future event, the second coming of the Lord; then our expectation becomes real because it concerns a future good. And it will be all the more lively and sincere the better we grasp the meaning of this glorious advent of Christ.”

This attitude also shines another light on the two subsequent feasts of Christmas and the Epiphany – as we shall see as the year progresses.

Layers of meaning

None of this means that we can insist on an apocalyptic paradigm of Advent to the exclusion of that of the stable and the star – nor to that of Christ’s coming to our hearts by grace.

I think that Pinsk is too hyperbolic when he states that “the celebration of Advent is the preparation for the Parousia of the Lord and nothing else.” We certainly are not joining the secularists in their calls to remove Nativity scenes and to cancel Christmas.

In any case, in the mind of the Church, Christ’s humble birth in a stable is itself a manifestation of God’s great power, and a fulfilment of the apocalyptic prophecies sung in the liturgy. In a similar way, Christ’s sufferings are also manifestations of his power and glory. All these humiliations offer striking and jarring contrasts between what is seen by the “eye of sense” and the “eye of faith.” The same texts about Christ’s glorious advent can simultaneously refer to his historical birth and to the Parousia (and of course, to his advent in the soul). These paradigms are not at all mutually exclusive.

But as we look at more and more of these texts, and enter into the sentiments which they express, it becomes harder to say that expectation for the historical birth is certainly the privileged theme. If nothing else, these texts are much more open to an apocalyptic paradigm than we might have thought.

What are we to conclude from these exciting and exuberant texts about the end of the world? What do they tell us about how to spend a good Advent? And how can they teach us to stand firm and unafraid amidst the chaos and crises of our time?

These questions will be the subject of the next part.

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[1] Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year Vol. I, Advent, St Bonaventure Publications, Great Falls, Montana, 2000, p 30.

[2] Pius XI, Encylical Quas Primas, 1925, n. 21. Available at https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius11/p11prima.htm.

[3] This essay draws on the observations of Fr Johannes Pinsk (1891-1957). Fr Pinsk was involved with the twentieth century liturgical movement in ways that many readers would consider regrettable. However, his 1933 essay ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’ has a wealth of interesting information about Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, which I would like to share. It also contains some things which we, as traditional Catholics, would either reject or consider suspect. My purpose here is to present what is good, along with some comments, and so to help us pass a profitable Advent. Johannes Pinsk, ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’, from Liturgische Zeitschrift Jahrgang, 1932-33 and reproduced in the Bulletin Paroissial Liturgique n. 1, 1938. This version is a DeepL translation from the Spanish version reproduced in El Que Vuelve, Vortice, Buenos Aires 2018, an available at https://engloriaymajestad.blogspot.com/2016/09/la-venida-del-senor-en-la-liturgia-por.html. Due to the difficulty of locating a physical copy of this text and giving correct page numbers, I will not clutter the text with references to it.

[4] Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ, The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days, Burns and oates Ltd, London, 1894, p 1

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid 1-2

[7] First and third responsories from Matins from the Second Sunday of Advent, taken from Divinum Officium. https://divinumofficium.com/cgi-bin/horas/officium.pl

[8] Third Responsory, Second Wednesday in Advent. Divinum Officium.

[9] First Responsory, Third Sunday of Advent. Divinum Officium.

[10] Verbum Supernum Prodiens, the hymn for Matins, translated by Fr Caswall. Available at: https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/o_thou_who_thine_own_fathers_bre.htm

[11] En clara vox redarguit, the hymn for Lauds, translated by Fr Caswall. Available at: https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/hark_an_awful_voice_is_sounding-caswall.htm

[12] From Creator alme siderum, the hymn for Vespers, as translated by J.M. Neale. Available at https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/creator_of_the_stars_of_night.htm

[13] Guéranger 31