Preparing for Advent--the Lesson of Waiting

NB: I'm more than a little grateful that we have had a bit more time this year between Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent. Ten whole days to bask in that post-turkey coma, to wrap my head around the coming season and how to best dispose ourselves as we prepare for the birth of Our Lord.

The following is an excerpt from an Advent post last year. 


(From a post on 12/21/11)

This is positively my favorite time of the Liturgical Year.

The anxious anticipation to our Lord's birth is crescendoing and the excitement is building. The church is draped in purple to foster a solemn spirit of penance as we wait, but with that glorious splash of pink to remind us of the joy that is just on the horizon.

But still...we must wait. And though all signs point to His imminent arrival, He's not here yet. Our hope, our Salvation is within grasping range, but it can't be hurried.

The Church in her wisdom doesn't just randomly make us wait for 4 weeks. The 4 weeks of Advent parallel, according to tradition, the to the 4,000 years that God's chosen people waited for the Messiah. From the Fall of Man, through the Covenant with Abraham, through the captivity of the Hebrews in Egypt, through the time of David and all the prophets until at last...4,000 years after sin entered the world, God finally sent His Son to Redeem mankind to conquer it. And this is an important point:

The promise of a Redeemer was made in the Garden of Eden but He didn't deliver on that promise for 4,000 years.

And during that time, He permitted his Chosen People to be purged and scourged as they waited for the Messiah.  He allowed His people to endure wars, pestilence, a great flood, desert wanderings, repeatedly falling into slavery and captivity by foreign pagan nations and even in-fighting among the 12 tribes of Israel which eventually caused His beloved nation to divide itself. God permitted these trials and sorrows to both test His people and their faith but also to demonstrate in no uncertain terms how His Son would reverse all this. Christ would be the New Adam who would free us from the slavery of sin; the Good Shepherd who would gently lead for His flock; the Divine Physician who would heal, restore, mend and unite.

Waiting...seems to be the story of my life.  Of us all--some to more of a degree than the rest. But we all wait. And though it's very often frustrating and even painful, waiting is good. It strengthens virtue (patience, forbearance, etc.) and trains us to submit our wills and desires for those of God's. I know this is not a new idea under the sun so I won't belabor the point. But here's my point:

We live in a push-botton society where we instantly want to know and have everything RIGHT NOW. We don't want to wait...for anything. We have an economic crisis in our country because people couldn't wait until they actually earned the money for the things they wanted. We carry smart phones so we have up-to-the-minute social networking access and get impatient when our text messages aren't replied to within 15 seconds. We have IVF clinics and sperma/egg donors for those who don't want to bother with the hassle of fixing the organic problem of infertility. I could go on...

But then there are the times where it's not by choice that we wait. Nothing we can do to hurry the hand of God. And it's during this time of waiting that we are obliged to slow down, reflect and more importantly, to submit. The spiritual effects of waiting well are limitless, though I for one have only begun to scratch the surface of this concept (much less how to accomplish it). But the 4,000 year wait of the Chosen People gives me new insight into the great divide between God's timing and ours.

And so Advent is a perfect time to foster this concept of the virtues attached to waiting, especially with little ones. In our home, we tend to decorate our home for the season sparsely at first; gradually, incrementally, and slowly our home is transformed over time. We purposely do so in a slow manner--much to my children's dismay who can't wait to bust out every single Christmas trinket we own right after Thanksgiving. Instead we try to encourage the children to savor these preparations and enjoy the time it takes to reach Christmas.

To savor the wait. This transformation of the home and the heart demands that we not hurry.

Now, to be clear, we're not Scrooges. We still enjoy the pre-Christmas holiday parties, cookie exchanges, neighborhood caroling parties or the like. Rather, in general, our theme for Advent is this: Slow down. Get ready. The time for true celebration has yet to arrive. Rather than toss their trees to curb on Dec. 26, the celebrations in our home will have just begun and will continue through the Epiphany and Baptism of our Lord.