The first Sunday of Advent

On the first Sunday of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas, the Church begins a new year. The word Advent means “coming”. For about four weeks we get ready for the coming of Jesus: his birth at Christmas and, the Church teaches, the day he will come again in glory. The Gospel on this Sunday asks us to stay awake and ready, because nobody knows when that day will be. Many families mark the weeks with an Advent wreath of four candles and light one more each Sunday. It is a family custom that began in Germany in the 1800s, and it is a lovely way to watch the light grow while we wait.

In many Hispanic homes the nacimiento, the nativity scene, goes up in these weeks, with Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the animals around an empty manger. The baby Jesus is placed in it only on Christmas Eve. It is a simple way for children to feel what waiting means: something wonderful is coming, and it is not here yet. And on 16 December the posadas begin, which have a lesson of their own.

This waiting is very old. The Church teaches that God spent centuries preparing the world for his Son: he chose a people, spoke through the prophets and kept the hope alive. The last of those voices was Saint John the Baptist, a relative of Jesus, who lived in the desert and called people to turn back to God. Every Advent the Church listens to him again, because he shows us how to get ready.

Crowds came to John and asked him what they should do. His answer was down to earth: share. Getting ready for Jesus does not need anything grand. It begins with opening our hands and making room in our hearts for him. In the old English of this translation, “meat” means food. This is what John told them, as Luke’s Gospel records it: