Terry Mattingly of GetReligion has a great column about the “two Christmases.” As he notes, for the Church, the Christmas season runs from Christmas Day (December 25) to Epiphany (January 6). These are the famous Twelve Days of Christmas. But in secular society, the Christmas season runs from around Thanksgiving until December 25. So this Sunday marks either the end of the Christmas season (for secular culture), or the First Day of Christmas (for the Church).

It’s an important difference, and one in which he notes many Christians tend to side with the world, rather than the Church:

“Unfortunately, most Americans — especially evangelical Protestants — have so distanced themselves from any awareness of the Christian calendar that their decisions about that kind of question have been handed over to the culture,”

said the Rev. Russell D. Moore, dean of the theology school at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Many evangelicals fear the “cold formalism” they associate with churches that follow the liturgical calendar, and the result, he said, is “no sense of what happens when in the Christian year, at all.” Thus, instead of celebrating ancient feasts such as Epiphany, Pentecost, and the Transfiguration, far too many American church calendars are limited to Christmas and Easter, along with cultural festivities such as Mother’s Day, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl.

As the piece notes, this is particularly problematic for Evangelicals, but I think we Catholics can be guilty of this, too.

The Difference Between the Two Christmases For the world, what we’ve just gone through was the Christmas season, and it’s tied to (at best) being nice, and making time for family and friends, or (at worst) non-stop marketing, shopping, and fighting off loneliness and despair with a credit card.

This Wednesday marks the end of the world’s Christmas season, because this is the climax of their efforts. This is the day when we come together and share all of those presents, and where we take some time off of work to be with our families. Once the presents are opened, and our families have started to annoy us again, it’s back to our ordinary routines. Santa Claus, the central figure of this Christmas, is already gone by Christmas morning.

But for the Church, this Wednesday should mark a beginning, not an end. It marks Christ’s advent into the world where, for the first time, we could behold the Savior of the World in the Flesh, as the rich and the poor, the Magi and the shepherds alike, fall to their knees. The period we just went through wasn’t the Christmas season, because Christ hadn’t come yet. It was the Advent season, in which we’ve prepared for Christ’s coming.

The Catechism explains that in Advent, the Church

“makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the precursor’s birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’”

Just as you tidy up for a party, and tidy up a lot for an important party, the birthday of Christ himself, his visit to each and every one of us, should motivate us to clean house. And cleaning house involves throwing out our old sins, and making space for Christ to come in.

With this view, Christ is our guest, and we want him to stay with us forever. So December 25 celebrates his arrival, and we savor this arrival in a special way for days, culminating on either January 6 (the traditional date of the Feast of the Epiphany), Epiphany Sunday (the nearest Sunday to January 6), or even Candlemas (February 2, for those cultures that really like Christmastime).

In a nutshell, here’s what I’d say are the two most important differences between the liturgical calendar and the secular one:

1. One makes Christmas something we do for Christ, while the other makes it something he does for us. The world’s version focuses on our efforts (our shopping, caroling, and the like), while the Church’s version focuses on Christ’s entry.
2. The world’s view of the Christmas season is largely without Christ. That is, all but the last day are a celebration of something we’re calling “Christmas,” without the Nativity. What exactly are we celebrating December 25 that’s different than what we were celebrating, say, December 20? By deemphasizing the utter centrality of the Nativity to Christmas, the focus starts to come off of Christ. Whether it’s shifted towards family or shopping, that shift’s still a disaster.

As Mattingly notes, this has hit Evangelicals the hardest. With a cultural suspicion of Advent and the whole notion of “liturgical seasons, ” Evangelicals end up turning to the world for their seasons and holidays. The most shocking example (at least to me) was my discovery that when Christmas falls on a Sunday, many Evangelical churches simply cancel church services. In 2011, when Christmas was on a Sunday, David Gibson reported for the Wall Street Journal: “ Nearly 10% of Protestant churches will be closed on Christmas Sunday this year (2014), according to LifeWay Research, and most pastors who are opening up say they expect far fewer people than on other Sundays. Other reports suggest that churches across the board are scaling down their services in anticipation of fewer worshipers.

‘We have to face the reality of families who don’t want to struggle to get kids dressed and come to church,’ Brad Jernberg of Dallas’s Cliff Temple Baptist Church told the Associated Baptist Press. Similarly, Beth Car Baptist Church in Halifax, Va., is planning a short service featuring bluegrass riffs on Christmas music. ‘I’ll do a brief sermon, and then we’re going home,’ said Pastor Mike Parnell.”

I suppose that this avoids the risk that worshiping God would get in the way of the purpose of secular-Christmas… to be with your family.

The Real War on Christmas
The secular “Christmas” season is a time of strife, with the infamous “war on Christmas” specials that Fox runs annually. But the real “war on Christmas” that we should be worried about is the one I just described, the internal destruction of Christmas by Christians.

Let me give two examples of what I mean here. The first one involves a dispute over whether or not two bus drivers were allowed to decorate their buses with Christmas decorations. One of the bus drivers defended the decorations by saying, “This is totally not a religious thing. This is about Christmas.” Yikes. This should be a wake-up call for Christians who want Christmas to be, you know, about Christ. We should be uncomfortable with both sides of the “war on Christmas”: those who want Christmas stamped out of public life, and those who want Christmas hollowed out into something harmless to secularist.

The second example is a more general one: the ongoing debate over whether we should say “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Holidays!” Reality check: the word “holiday” is just a shortened form of “holy day.” Christmas is a holiday, Fourth of July is not (hopefully). But “holiday” has come to mean simply “vacation,” because that’s how we treat our holidays. This is most obvious in the UK, where vacationing (anytime of year) is often described as “going on holiday.” But we Americans are guilty of it as well. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be so upset about the phrase “Happy Holidays,” because it’d be a religious phrase. If “Happy Holidays” has been sterilized to the point that secularists have no trouble using it, well, that’s partly our own fault.

So if this Wednesday is to be an end, let it be an end to the secular celebration of “Christmastime” one and for all. Take this Christmas as an opportunity to start fresh by welcoming Christ as your guest both for the day, and for the Christmas season, and forever.

Joe Heschmeyer is an instructor at the Holy Family School of Faith Institute for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, and blogs at Shameless Popery. This article first appears online at: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/is-this-the-end-of-the-christmas-season-or-the-beginning/20006/

Swaddled tightly beneath a starblanketed Bethlehem sky, God breathed with gentle power. The acceptable time had come. The prophecies were now—at last—fulfilled. The Creator had “entered” creation on a mission of love, and for the next three decades, peace and joy were inhaled and received in tangible new ways.

That Christmas night, the divine life of God was communicated through a tiny human breath. Put simply, God breathed not solely so that he might live but that we would. It’s fascinating how something so small like a breath forms the line between life and death. The Latin word for breath inspirare is where we get the term “inspiration;” it literally means, “to breathe [life] into.” Inspiration, however, is far more than a biological word or concept, it is a deeply spiritual reality. God’s inspiration animates our Christian souls, guides our steps, and offers us both a mission and a purpose.

We often talk about how the Bible is the “inspiration”—the breath —of the Holy Spirit; how the Word of God was recorded through the pens of men. But, have you ever stopped to consider how vital this inspiration of God is to our faith and, indeed, our lives as Catholics? The Church is inspired, the sacraments are inspired and—with any luck—with every encounter we witness on the pages of Sacred Scripture, we, too, are inspired. We breathe in God’s life (grace) not that we would hold it in, but that we might share it.

Inspiration leads to respiration.
Since you began reading this, you’ve probably taken between twenty and thirty breaths. We know, of course, that inspiration is not only vital for our bodies but also for our souls. It’s when we realize how desperately we need oxygen that we come to appreciate it more.

It’s how our story began, after all (or, “before all” if you want to get technical). Life began because God spoke; he breathed the Word (Genesis 1:3) and creation spun into existence. It was when God breathed life into Adam, however, that things got even more interesting (Genesis 2:7): creation now bore the ability to inspire, to procreate life in God’s image. And at that very first Christmas, beside that majestic manger, the new Adam was swaddled tightly by the new Eve. Heaven breathed. God had drawn near in an even more intimate way than in Eden. The Savior’s exhale announced the coming Kingdom. Heaven came to earth to bring earth back to heaven.

As your eyes take in the crèche this year, allow the Holy Spirit to inspire you, again. Gaze upon these incredible figures immersed in the beautiful reality that is our Christmas story. Ponder these realities in your heart as the Blessed Mother did (Luke 2:19). Consider what each character represents and how they were led to this holy night—heroic characters, timeless tales—all immersed in heart-stopping and soul-stirring moments beside the manger. How ironic that the reality of the Christmas story brings us life by taking our breath away.

As you look forward to the Christmas season, recall your own journey that brought you to this place. For just as the light increased within our Advent wreaths each week, the Light now enters to eclipse the darkness of our world, our homes, and our hearts. Throughout this past Advent season the daily readings reminded us that life’s greatest blessings are often born out of its greatest struggles. For those souls reading this who feel immersed in stress, loneliness or darkness this year, especially, remember now that our Emmanuel has come, “God is (indeed) with us” (Matthew 1:23).

At first glance, Mary’s experience of Christ’s birth seems to be shrouded in more darkness than light. Consider these moments from St. Luke’s Gospel: A teenage virgin is pregnant, but not with her husband-to-be’s child. The girl then leaves home for three months; later, in her third trimester of pregnancy, she leaves home again and travels roughly ninety miles by donkey. She gives birth in a cave and, soon after, hears from a prophet that both she and her child will suffer greatly. Most people would not consider these mysterious moments very “joyful.” Prayerful reflection on the mysteries, however, reveals a cause for intense joy. God was on a rescue mission to save us, and that mission included courageous souls fighting through incredibly challenging situations. Not only do the Joyful Mysteries walk us more deeply into the conception, birth, and childhood years of our Lord Jesus, but they also reveal to us a God who is madly in love with us, a God who will stop at nothing to save all of us from sin and death.

The Christmas mystery—the mystery of the Incarnation—invites us to active prayer. God emptied himself and took on flesh. This is beautiful, not only because of the humility and gentleness of the baby in the manger, but because of his invitation to interact with him physically and intimately. The entire Nativity scene is a celebration of God’s love for his children; his willingness to stop at nothing to ensure our salvation. It’s a scene that we must prayerfully engage in, not just passively “admire.” Never forget that the Lord didn’t come to be admired but worshipped. We should fall on our knees this night, as they did so many centuries ago, breathe in his peace and joy, and worship the God who loved us enough to be born into the world’s brokenness and sin to save us from it.

Mark Hart has helped transform Catholic youth and young adult Scripture study in parishes, homes, and classrooms with his wildly popular Bible study programs. A devoted husband and father of four, Mark’s humor and his passion for Scripture are helping hundreds of thousands of Catholics, young and old, begin to read and study the Bible in engaging, fun, and relevant ways. His latest project with Ascension, The 99, will

I distinctly remember the first time I went on a retreat. It was my first year of seminary and during Christmas break all of us seminarians at Bishop Bruté (the college seminary our diocese uses in Indianapolis) spent a few days before returning to “the Castle” in prayer and recollection at St. Meinrad Seminary (actually, one of the theology seminaries our diocese also uses). It is a picturesque place – looking out over the rolling, tree-covered, hills of rural Indiana; a peaceful one – away from the busy-ness of the world, the excitements of Christmas back with family, and the efforts and fraternity of seminary life; and one permeated with the prayers of the monks who live there – marked by the hourly chiming of their bell tower prominently standing over the town. But it is not so much those delights that I recall here, but the power of that place to draw me into prayer.

There is something about changing one’s location – physically and spiritually – that invites you into a deeper, more trusting, more profound, more total kind of prayer. With different stone walls to contain my adoration and different colors streaming through the windows to illuminate my meditation, I saw the scriptures and encountered the Eucharist in a renewed way. Drawn out of my “usual” prayer, as I rested with God in the various chapels there, all those graces and gifts of those first months in seminary, and those past weeks around Christmas, flowed through my mind and heart, newly opened to remember them again.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus quotes from the Prophet Isaiah as he responds to the disciples of John the Baptist: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.” This is a radical new moment in God’s offer of salvation; it’s meant to catch their attention and open their hearts. Advent is the season that takes us back through the utterly worldchanging coming of Jesus Christ. It tugs our hearts and mind into a different place, a different location. If we had gotten accustomed to the readings and prayers of ordinary time, now we have been thrown abruptly back to the tremendous truths of creation, through the saga of salvation history, towards the breathtaking birth of the Savior, and also forward to His resplendent return at the end of everything. The lights, wreaths, smells, and even the change in weather and light outside all similarly draw us into this renewal of our relationship with Christ. They are all meant to dispose us for that meeting, approaching, and kneeling before our baby Lord.

Here at Cathedral, among plenty of other things certainly, we also have begun again for the season to use the Latin responses at the Sanctus, Mysterium Fidei, and Agnus Dei. It is one simple way to re-open our hearts to the Lord. How deeply language touches us. That’s the power that we’re trying to capture with this change. These are parts of the Mass that the Church, as she has for centuries, encourages us to know in Latin. Why? Because the world does know them! I mean that! I’ve seen it! It is the most incredible, universal, catholic, thing ever to be able to go to Mass anywhere on the planet, and at those points of the Mass realize we can sing together those very same prayers. The Sanctus, the great song of the angels sung above Bethlehem at Christ’s birth, and the Agnus Dei, that central prayer of every Christian begging the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, to have mercy on us, now and at our deaths, are probably familiar.

But that central one, the Mysterium Fidei, though it is a bit more of a mouthful, is just as central to our faith! The words are as follows: Mortem tuam annuntiamus, Domine, et tuam resurrectionem confitemur, donec venias. This is the same phrase we know well in English: “We proclaim your Death, O Lord and profess your Resurrection until you come again,” but in Latin, these exact words have been said directly following the consecration for 1500 years! When we sing them, at that most central moment of the Mass, we sing with all those centuries of worshipping Christians! I’d like to invite us all to meditate on these words anew and sing them with heart! They truly capture the essence what we believe: that Christ died for us, rose from the dead, and will return in glory. Furthermore, they are our first prayer to Christ newly present in the Eucharist on the altar. He gives us His Body and Blood, participation in His death and resurrection and prepares us for His coming. Let us allow this prayer to fill our hearts as we continue to pray this Advent: “come, Lord Jesus”.

Fr. Dominic Rankin is a Parochial Vicar at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Around this time of year, people from a variety of cultures across the world are running around trying to prepare for Christmas. Some are getting their homes ready for guests. Some are getting stressed out with shopping. How do Christians, specifically Catholic Christians, prepare for Christmas? To many Catholics, the obvious answer is Advent.

However, if we were to ask the average Catholic on the street what this preparation for Christmas entailed, we might find the entire season reduced to lighting four candles, one of which is pink. Clearly, though, with two thousand years of tradition and development, the Catholic Church recognizes that this pre- Christmas season means much more than an Advent wreath. What we forget, often enough, is that the season of Advent is penitential in nature.

Now this is a bit different than saying that Advent is strictly a penitential season, like Lent, but we’ll see soon that this is about much more than semantics. While some would totally bury the penitential nature of the pre-Christmas season, it would do us well to explore what the universal Church, through her different liturgical rites, actually prescribes for the faithful. Preparation often entails penance, but in the season of Advent we experience a joyful penance and expectation of our Lord Jesus.

Drawing Closer to Christ’s Birth

It’s probably true that only a Christian could call penance joyful. Nevertheless, as we explore the history and rationale behind the pre-Christmas seasons of the Church, it will become quite clear how this can be so, and how we are able to merge a penitential nature with a cheerful expectation of our Lord’s First Coming in the manger.

It’s natural for Christians to surmise that what Lent is to Easter, Advent is to Christmas. This is true to an extent. For instance, the liturgical color for both seasons is purple, or violet. This is not insignificant. When a priest is hearing confessions, the stole that he wears is always purple. This is because, as Fr. William Saunders puts it, violet is “a sign of penance, sacrifice and preparation.” The violet color symbolizes that we are trying to get somewhere, that we are anticipating something. And in the case of both Lent and Advent, we are anticipating someone.

We joyfully expect the birth of the Savior for Christmas, and his Resurrection and triumph over death for Easter. Also, when it comes to liturgical colors, priests wear rose (or what we might call pink) vestments for Gaudete Sunday in Advent or Laetare Sunday in Lent. These come into play at the halfway point of each season, and the pinkish color represents a sign of joy as each holy day draws ever closer.

Is Advent Penitential in Nature?

So those are at least the surface level similarities between the Advent and Lenten seasons. But can we really call Advent a penitential season? It may be more accurate to say that Advent, or at least the time leading up to the celebration of Christmas, is penitential in nature. Here’s why. According to the Code of Canon Law:

“The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent” (Canon 1250).

Advent is obviously absent from this mention of “penitential times”. Very strictly speaking, Advent is not a penitential season. However, also note that Ember Days are not included here. Ember Days serve as a sort of quarterly “checkup” for Catholics of the Latin Rite, calling us to penitence at certain points throughout the year. Following the Second Vatican Council, the fasting and abstinence during Ember Days no longer was obligatory, and sadly it fell out of use by many Catholics all over the world.

There has been a revival of this penitential practice recently, particularly in the wake of the most recent sex abuse scandals, with the bishops of Pittsburgh and Madison both explicitly calling their flock to make it a point in observing the Ember Days this year. So, clearly, we can see that there are instances in the liturgical year, beyond that which is laid out in Canon 1250, that take on a penitential feature. As Gregory DiPippo, the editor of New Liturgical Movement, points out:

“The Church’s traditions are not comprehensively determined by or summed up in any Code of Canon Law, nor in any Missal or other liturgical book.”

In Anticipation of the Full Joy

We can look to the Sacred Liturgy for even more clues showing the penitential nature of Advent through our traditions. When going to Holy Mass on Sundays of Advent, you’ll notice that the Gloria is not said at all, just as it is in the Lenten season. Also, we see that the decoration of churches during Advent is strikingly similar to how churches are decorated during Lent. According to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), we see that the atmosphere is more subdued in Advent as it is in Lent:

“During Advent the floral decoration of the altar should be marked by a moderation suited to the character of this time of year, without expressing in anticipation the full joy of the Nativity of the Lord. During Lent it is forbidden for the altar to be decorated with flowers. Exceptions, however, are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts” (GIRM 305).

Just a bit further below in the GIRM, it is also noted that:

“In Advent the use of the organ and other musical instruments should be marked by a moderation suited to the character of this time of year, without expressing in anticipation the full joy of the Nativity of the Lord” (GIRM 313).

Downplaying the Value of Fasting

Given all this, there isn’t really anything wrong with calling Advent a penitential season, because historically, throughout the various rites of the Church, the penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving have all been present in the days leading up to Christmas Day. As we see in the Catholic Encyclopedia, popes and synods before the Council of Trent preached about the need for fasting during this time before Christmas. Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216) even declared that black vestments should be used during Advent.

The preparation that the Christian undertook during the days before Christmas was to, at least in part, make the faithful “ready for [Jesus’] final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.” What better way to do this than through the three pillars of repentance? Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are all integral parts of Christian living every day of the year. But as we prepare for major feasts, such as Easter and Christmas, Christians rightly find themselves “pommeling and subduing their bodies” as St. Paul did (1 Corinthians 9:27), lest they be disqualified of the beatific vision. For whatever reason, though, fasting during Advent has been greatly downplayed in the Latin Rite over the last several decades.

Traditions Outside the Latin Rite

On that note, it’s important to observe that we’ve thus far only mentioned the traditions of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. The universal Church is made up of a variety of liturgical traditions, all fully Catholic, which we call “rites”, and among these rites we see that there are many parallels to the Advent season. In looking at these parallel periods of time, it becomes clear that the preparation before Christmas has had a penitential dimension across cultures nearly from the start.

The Armenian Rite
For instance, in the Armenian Rite, the time before Christmas is called Heesnag. While this period does not function as a proper liturgical season, Heesnag does feature several days of fasting in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The Antiochene Rite
Similarly, in the Antiochene Rite (also known as the West Syrian Rite), we see the Fast of the Nativity. For Maronite Catholics, there are actually four periods of fasting, all of varying lengths. The Nativity Fast used to be one of the longest, starting on November 15, around the same time as the Armenians’ and Byzantines’. But as time went on, the fast became shorter, yet still an important part of the Maronite Catholic liturgical tradition.

Differing a bit from how Latin Catholics fast, Maronite Catholics traditionally do not eat anything from midnight until noon. Despite the differences between liturgical rites, we see an emerging pattern of the great emphasis put on penitential practices before Christmas.

The Byzantine Rite
Perhaps the clearest sign of this comes from the Pylypivka of the Byzantine Rite, more commonly known as “Philip’s Fast”. The fast is so named for St. Philip the Evangelist, on whose feast (November 14) the Pylypivka starts.

Instead of being a distinct liturgical season, the Philip’s Fast is exactly what it sounds like: a fast of forty days which prepares the soul to be open to God working through our lives. While each particular Church (i.e., Ukrainian Catholic, Romanian Catholic, Melkite Catholic, etc.) has their own custom, “the traditional Christmas fast [generally] calls for the faithful to observe strict abstinence (no meat, fish, dairy, or other animal product, wine or oil) on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays; and a lesser abstinence (no meat, fish, dairy or animal products) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fish is allowed on Saturdays and Sundays, but no other animal products.”

We Christians Live Differently

To us Roman Catholics, this might strike us as a bit intense. But if we step back for a moment, getting out of our comfort zones, we’ll see that there is some real merit in how Eastern Christians approach fasting. One Byzantine Catholic priest puts it like this:

“I know, I know. What kind of crazy religion asks you to fast for six weeks before Christmas? Why, with all the parties that we have to go to, all the presents to buy… why should the Church give us one more thing to worry about…

“But… imagine that we Christians lived differently. Imagine what would happen if we Christians spent the Nativity season becoming more deeply attached to reality rather than trying to escape it by indulging artificial desires? What if, instead of running away from the world we spent this time loving the world more deeply?”

A Way of Imploring Forgiveness

Fasting allows us to put things in perspective. It’s a real sacrifice to give up meals, meat, or other foods. It’s also a real sacrifice to give up other things like long showers, TV shows, or music in the car. All these things help us to share in the sufferings of Christ, making it readily apparent why all the various liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church embrace these practices. But as Latin Catholics, looking at what many of our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox brethren do during this time, we should have reason to put things into perspective.

Even though we are not required to fast or abstain from meat or other things during Advent, what’s keeping us from doing so? Why shouldn’t we make this Advent penitential? In light of the recent scandals in the Church, asking for God’s mercy, particularly in reparation for the sins committed, is something that should be at the forefront of our minds. In his Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to the People of God, Pope Francis made the following exhortation:

“Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion.”

Let’s Prepare Our Hearts

So let’s not stop at lighting our Advent wreaths this season. It’s time to get deep into the trenches. If we here on earth make up the Church Militant, it’s time to prepare for battle. We have many tools in our arsenal as we walk toward greater perfection, and prayer and fasting are first among those tools.

When Satan is on the prowl for souls, as he certainly is now, we need to redouble our efforts. If Advent hasn’t had a penitential connotation for you in past years, make an effort to change that this year, even if it’s something small like not eating in between meals. Before you know it, Christmas will be here. Let’s use this time wisely, and truly prepare our hearts for the coming of the Savior in the best way possible.

Nicholas is a twenty-something cradle Catholic who wears many hats, (husband, father, tradesman, religious education catechist, liberal arts college graduate, et al.) and hopes to give a unique perspective on life in the Church as a millennial. His favorite saints include his patron St. Nicholas, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Mary Vianney and St. Athanasius of Alexandria. He currently writes for the Diocese of Joliet’s monthly magazine, Christ Is Our Hope.

When I was a nominal Catholic, I liked to pretend that I knew a lot about Catholicism. Realistically, I knew slightly less than the average 7-year-old knows about the workings of a combustible steam engine. Back then, for me, Advent was the Catholic word for Christmas. I was, for a lack of a better term, a theological idiot.

Webster’s Dictionary gives three meanings for the word Advent:

1. The arrival of a notable person, thing, or event. The advent of Christ. The advent of television. The advent of the day my husband will finally pick up the pair of socks that have been in the same spot on the floor for six weeks.
2. The first season of the Christian church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays. So, all of December.
3. The coming or second coming of Christ.

If you knew this, you’re doing better than I was most of my life. One of the many drawbacks of being a lukewarm Catholic is blindly going through life thinking you know enough about the faith, yet really knowing very little, including the why and how behind most of the Church’s teachings. For a number of years, I was part of the misinformation problem.

Advent is a trifecta of celebrations:

• Celebrating Christ’s birth.
• Waiting for Christ to return to Earth again.
• Waiting for Christ to come into our hearts.

In a culture where everything is instant, we most certainly have lost the art of waiting. I blame Amazon because faith has no Prime shipping. We’ve lost the wonder and contemplation needed to appreciate the beauty and mystery of Advent. How can we find Christ at Christmas if we aren’t watching and waiting for him? How can we appreciate the time we have to wait when we can’t even wait two minutes for a slow Wi-Fi confection?

Advent gives us a chance to really put our minds where it matters most, on the next life. Here’s how:

Quit being too busy to be spiritual

I know you have to do the thing with the thing before the thing and then you have to rush off to the other thing, and in the words of INXS, “There’s not enough time…” If you wait for the time, it’ll never come. So, make room. Turn off your phone. Set aside your to-do list. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Sit in the chapel.

Sacrifice all of the things

Then, substitute them with Jesus. Give up some part of your daily routine to fit in 20-30 minutes for Christ:

• Pray on your afternoon run.
• Dedicate a decade of the Rosary to someone you don’t know who needs prayers. No Rosary? No problem. God gave you 10 fingers.
• Listen to Scripture or faith-based books/podcasts on your commute.
• Grab a Bible and pick a psalm. Find a sentence and make it your daily meditation. Apply those words to your day and try to uncover their meaning in your life.

Take your Christmas playlist to a higher level

Traditional Christmas music is one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving through Epiphany. There’s a rumor going around that I even indulge in summer. Once or twice a week, or an hour before bed, listen to some spiritual songs, like a Gregorian chant or (my favorite) “Advent in Ephesus” by the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles. They are prayers that feel as traditional as Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” but are spiritually uplifting, calming, and peaceful.

Give, give, give

You don’t always have to give away money. Give your time, talent, and friendship. Be kind to an enemy. Pay someone a compliment who doesn’t deserve it—bonus points if you do it after they’re rude to you. Hold open a door for a stranger. Offer to help someone carry their groceries. Write inspirational quotes on cards that serve as compliments to people and randomly place them on car windshields. Remember that the smallest act of kindness is still a huge act of love.

Have Sunday Advent dinners

If the good Lord gave you the gift of culinary skills then by all means, give Glory to God with traditional Advent meals. I was given no such skills. I am a terrible cook. Use these meal ideas to spark conversation and invite talk about Advent, God, prayer, and, of course, to eat. Obviously, feasts are important to Catholics, since we celebrate one every day. End these meals by lighting the candle on your Advent wreath for the week.

Go to Confession

Advent is diet Lent. Cough it up, fess up, spill it out. Get into Confession because if Advent is the time to celebrate the Second Coming, we should be ready at all times. No one wants to greet Jesus with a dirty soul. I know. Gah. Bleh. Confession. Eye roll. I get it. No one who ever rolled their eyes at the idea of going to Confession did harder than I did once upon a time. I’d even toss in a “pfffft” with the eye roll because I was a terrible person. The truth is, without Confession we really can’t allow Christ into our hearts, which is needed for deeper conversion, and that is what this is all about. That’s what it’s always been about. If you do nothing else during Advent, consider, at least, Confession.

Let’s celebrate Advent this year as Catholics ready and willing to serve our God. Let’s be humbled and filled with everlasting love for each other so we can show the world what true Christianity is all about. Let us find this season the path of peace and the ability to let Christ enter our hearts so that one day when he comes, we can kneel in reverence, bow our heads, and know that we served our purpose in this life: serving and loving. You can’t find either of those on Amazon.

Christina Antus lives with her husband and her three cute, but noisy, kids. When she’s not writing, she’s running, reading, folding forever-piles of laundry, and probably burning dinner. You can read more of Christina’s writing here: http://www.heykristeenuh.com/.

Last weekend, as I was greeting people and shaking hands after Mass, I said to a few parishioners, “Happy New Year!” Some of the glances and puzzled looks that I received in return gave me the impression that for a few, I really took them off guard—and someone even warned me that I was a bit early for ushering in the new year.

What I meant, of course, was to wish people a happy beginning to the Church’s new year, which commences every year with this season of Advent. As of last Sunday, we began a new liturgical cycle, reliving anew the mysteries of our salvation ‘from the top,’ starting appropriately with this season of postured anticipation of a Savior who will be born among us at Christmas. We move from studying Luke on most Sundays to Matthew in this coming year. In all of our liturgical books, we made what the seminarians I studied with used to call the “big flip,” which was when we moved the ribbons from the very back of the books to the very front. All in all, there’s just something satisfying about knowing we’ve completed another year in the Lord’s grace, and so we begin again.

While I’m not sure it’s ever necessarily been the practice to make resolutions at the beginning of a liturgical year, I think this ‘new beginning’ does present us with a perfect opportunity: to examine our spiritual lives with fresh eyes; to ask the Lord to illumine those ways in which He is calling us to grow deeper in the mystery and in the practice of our faith; and to resolve to adhere to some simple and achievable practices in this coming year. Ask yourself in prayer this week,

“How is God calling me deeper? What can I do to recommit myself to this life of discipleship and prayer? What is a small resolution that I can make to God in this coming year?”

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• If you haven’t gone to confession in years (yeah, you!), there’s no time like the present!
• Start praying before meals with your family, if you don’t already. Kneel by your beside every night and thank God for the beauty of another day.
• Commit to reading the Scriptures every day. Read a single chapter of one of the Gospels or start with the Book of Psalms. If you want something systematic, the Augustine Institute published a Bible in a Year that I find helpful, and it only takes about 20-30 minutes per day. (For the more technologically inclined, there are apps for this as well.)
• Spend a weekly or monthly hour in adoration. Start coming to Cathedral’s offerings of adoration on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Come see what our Late Advent Holy Hour is about!
• Resolve to pray the Rosary daily or weekly or to spend your commute offering a Divine Mercy Chaplet.
• Look through this Weekly and pick one of the plethora of Advent Offerings and go. Invite a friend! Go to some of the many adult faith formation opportunities we host. Discover the beauty of prayer and song at Lessons and Carols. Come see what a Rorate Coeli Mass is.
• Ever tried going to a daily Mass? Try going one extra day a week. See what grace the Lord has in store for you.
• Pick a different thing to fast from every week (coffee, snacking, salt, dessert, social media/internet, etc.). Offer the little suffering for someone you know who is sick or in need of your prayers.
• Explore the world of Catholic podcasts. I’m a fan of Catholic Stuff You Should Know. The Diocese started a podcast called Dive Deep. There’s even a podcast for praying the Liturgy of the Hours (called Pray Station Portable).
• Follow the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois on Facebook or Instagram. Share a post every once in a while. Be that person.
• Up your weekly contribution by $5. Pick a charity that you know and trust—local or global—and send them a donation. Commit to living discipleship in your financial life as well.
• Pick up a book for spiritual reading. Learn about the saints. Dive in deeper with some theology or spiritual classics. If you need suggestions, call me!

The options are endless. Pick something you can accomplish. Like our other New Year’s resolutions, we don’t want these to be a distant memory in just a couple weeks from now. Don’t try and do everything; but as a spiritual director once told me, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Resolve to do something good, even if we’re never going to implement in perfectly. One thing I know is that our Lord can never be outdone in generosity—if you commit to growing with the Lord, even a small effort can be met with great reward!

Father Michael Friedel is a Parochial Vicar at the Cathedral and Chaplain at Sacred Heart Griffin High School.

For much of the world the Christmas season has arrived; or I suppose one could say, it arrived several weeks ago!

While the secular celebration of Christmas begins earlier and earlier each year, we as Christians are asked to reel things back in a bit, in order to prepare for the actual Feast of our Lord Jesus’ Nativity. Whereas the world finds itself on a roller coaster, beginning around the night of October 31, slowly climbing up the tall mountain over the next two months only to find itself on the steepest of declines every December 26, the Christian is asked to prepare with the Advent season. No roller coasters in sight here, as we find ourselves on a much more serene bell curve.

The liturgical new year begins on the Feast of Christ the King, between November 20 and November 26 each year. We then begin the buildup for Christmas on the following weekend with the First Sunday of Advent, which then crescendos with Christmas Day, with a bell curve leading us slowly back down into Ordinary Time with the true twelve days of Christmas. The pacing of the Christian calendar helps us orient our focus on Christ much easier than the hustle and bustle of the commercialized Christmas season. And as we find ourselves just beginning our journey into Advent and Christmas, we would do well to look to the wisdom of the saints, both from times past and of more recent times. This way, we can refocus during this solemn time of Advent, in preparation for the awesome celebration of the Savior’s birth.

Josemaría Escrivá

St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei in the midtwentieth century, has left us with voluminous writings on the Christian life, particularly in regards to this season of Advent. In one sermon, St. Josemaría exhorts us to turn away from the evils of pride and sensuality, and to focus on our true vocation:

“On this first Sunday of Advent, when we begin to count the days separating us from the birth of the Savior … we have considered the reality of our Christian vocation: how our Lord has entrusted us with the mission of attracting other souls to sanctity, encouraging them to get close to him, to feel united to the Church, to extend the kingdom of God to all hearts. Jesus wants to see us dedicated, faithful, responsive. He wants us to love him. It is his desire that we be holy, very much his own.”

St. Josemaría’s words remind me of something I recently heard in a homily. During these weeks that lead up to Christmas, our culture seems to engage more in sensual pleasures. Company parties, feasts, shopping sprees. All these things cause distraction, taking our sights off what we’ve been called to do in the world, which is to be a contradiction of this current age. This is why Advent is such a perfect time to “extend the kingdom of God” to our friends and peers. Instead of indulging in all the various things that surround us in the commercialized Christmas season, we can live a bit more simply through increased fasting and prayer. Or if we must attend such functions before the true Christmas season begins, we can do more penitential acts during other days of the week. This way, our Lord will hopefully see us as dedicated, faithful and responsive to his will. St. Josemaría continues:

“This time of Advent is a time for hope. These great horizons of our Christian vocation, this unity of life built on the presence of God our Father, can and ought to be a daily reality. Ask our Lady, along with me, to make it come true. Try to imagine how she spent these months, waiting for her Son to be born. And our Lady, Holy Mary, will make of you alter Christus, ipse Christus: another Christ, Christ himself!”

Here we have the perfect example, and single boast of our human race, in the blessed Mother. Her life was certainly built on the presence of God, and we can experience that as well when we are oriented toward heavenly matters as opposed to the worldly matters of “the holiday season”. This time of Advent will afford us a great opportunity to be “another Christ” to the world. But before we can be another Christ to the world, we must first let our Lord transform our very beings.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

This is something that the great Doctor of the Church, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, spoke about. Living during the twelfth century, St. Bernard wrote a series of sermons for Advent. Often called the last “Father of the Church” in the Christian West, his words are still relevant even as we experience the Advent season in the twenty-first century. He reminds us that we are in actuality preparing for “two advents”:

“It is fitting, my brethren, that we should celebrate this season of Advent with all possible devotion, rejoicing in so great a consolation, marveling at so great a condescension, inflamed with love by so great a manifestation of charity. But let us not think of that advent only whereby the Son of man has ‘come to seek and to save that which was lost,’ but also of that other by which He will come again and will take us to Himself. Would to God you kept these two advents constantly in your thoughts, revolving them in assiduous meditation, pondering in your hearts how much we have received by the first, how much we are promised at the second!”

The Advent season, then, helps us to bear in mind our ultimate destiny. It causes us to call to mind that, God-willing, we will at the end of our earthly lives be in union with our Lord for eternity. God came into the world to redeem the entire human race, but he will also come again as he promised us. To think about the Second Coming as we prepare to remember his First Coming brings everything full circle. Christ came into the world so that sin would have no reign over us. And when he returns again at the end of the world, he will bring all those that follow him into heaven, where only his love reigns supreme and where the effects of sin will be non-existent. This is what the season of Advent looks forward to in the truest sense. In the first Advent, God became man. But in the second Advent, when our Lord reunites our souls with our bodies, we as men will become like God. Truly, we must always ponder these two types of “advents”, especially at this time of the year.

Pope St. John Paul II

But even if we turn our attention just to this “first Advent”, we’ll see that the Lord’s Nativity, which Advent anticipates, is not merely confined to one point in time, or to one culture in the past. Pope St. John Paul II explains in a beautiful homily he gave in 1988:

“In Advent we await an event which occurs in history and at the same time transcends it. As it does every year, this event will take place on the night of the Lord’s Birth. The shepherds will hasten to the stable in Bethlehem; later the Magi will arrive from the East. Both the one and the other in a certain sense symbolize the entire human family. The exhortation that rings out in today’s liturgy: ‘Let us go joyfully to meet the Lord spreads to all countries, to all continents, among every people and nation.”

The birth of our Lord and Savior is to be transmitted to all peoples across all points of time. This confirms exactly what St. Josemaría had mentioned above, that we “extend the kingdom of God” into the hearts of all those we encounter. St. John Paul has this in mind when he talks of the Nativity transcending time itself. Our own personal meeting with the Lord, and cultivating that relationship with him, causes us to preach the Good News to the world in our words and actions. Once we have found solace in Christ, how could we not want to share it? As he continues, St. John Paul II also finds himself in agreement with St. Bernard:

“In today’s Gospel we heard the Lord’s invitation to be watchful: ‘[Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’ (Matthew 24:42) … The exhortation to be watchful resounds many times in the liturgy, especially in Advent, a season of preparation not only for Christmas, but also for Christ’s definitive and glorious coming at the end of time. It therefore has a distinctly eschatological meaning and invites the believer to spend every day and every moment in the presence of the One ‘who is and who was and who is come’ (Revelation 1:4), to whom the future of the world and of man belongs. This is Christian hope!”

We proclaim this hope every Sunday in the Nicene Creed. We look forward with a hopeful view to the resurrection of the dead, and that wonderful life of the world to come. We prepare for that in a very special way during Advent, being watchful for our Lord just as the shepherds and wise men were as they anticipated the Lord’s birth. This eschatological dimension of the Advent season must always be at the forefront of our minds. So instead of celebrating Christmas early this year, let’s think in sync with the great saints, and let Advent be Advent so we may more fruitfully contemplate that triumphant moment when we will be face to face with our Lord Jesus at the end of time in the heavenly kingdom.

Nicholas LaBanca is a cradle Catholic and hopes to give a unique perspective on living life in the Catholic Church as a millennial. His favorite saints include his patron St. Nicholas, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Mary Vianney, and St. Athanasius of Alexandria.