Advent: Anticipation

Songs:

O Magnum Mysterium

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Poetry

Advent

by Patrick Kavanagh

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-

Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.

But here in the Advent-darkened room

Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea

Of penance will charm back the luxury

Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom

The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing

When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking

Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill

Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking

Of an old fool will awake for us and bring

You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins

And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching

For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-

We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning

Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.

And we'll hear it among decent men too

Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,

Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.

Won't we be rich, my love and I, and

God we shall not ask for reason's payment,

The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges

Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.

We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages

Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-

And Christ comes with a January flower.

Scripture

Luke 1:8-25

Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God,  he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.

When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

Hope from Wonder

The first glimpse I got of the Atlantic, I laughed. Standing on the crest of a sand dune, words dissolved in my mind as I watched wave hit sand, sea spray and cloud like one glittering curtain, veiling further coastline.  

I had come to this beach–Streedagh Beach–on the recommendation of my Airbnb neighbour, a man from Galway, staying in Sligo with his family for a few days of surfing. “Are you here to walk?” he had asked me. I hadn’t really thought about why I had chosen Sligo for a holiday or what I was planning to do with the next four days on my own. I just knew I needed the quiet, the space. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. 

It had been an emotionally turbulent few weeks. I’d witnessed the mental breakdown of a friend and experienced the subsequent fallout. I had been confronted by my own sin and discovered a lot more fear and pride and unbelief hiding in my heart. I was navigating a new role, grieving the imminent departure of dear friends, and just generally still finding my feet as a 28 year old back in the home of my early 20s. Differences–in myself and this place–that had seemed slight when I first landed back in Dublin in March, were proving more significant than previously. It wasn’t all bad. In fact most of it was a confusing mixture of bad and good, grief and grace, death and life. I was filled to the brim with ambivalence, overwhelmed by paradox. “Just stop thinking,” was the advice I kept hearing from friends, family, even myself. Just stop.

Perhaps that’s what I had hoped for this holiday. I had thought I could have the space to untangle all the separate threads of life and emotion with a little time away on my own. But one glimpse of the wild sea, one deep breath of cold salty air and my mind went silent and all I could hear was the rush of water as I felt one singular, lately unfamiliar thing–wonder. 

Patrick Kavanagh’s poem “Advent,” is a bittersweet ode to this re-learning of wonder. In the austere surroundings of the advent season, childlikeness returns as worldliness departs. “Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.” Wonder, Kavanagh suggests, is found not in reason, nor “pleasure, knowledge, and the conscious-hour,” but in seeing old things anew “wherever life pours ordinary plenty.” In simplicity, there is peace. In the ordinary, there is wonder.

And yet in the passage from Luke’s Gospel, we encounter wonder at the extraordinary. As Zechariah is in the temple, praying and burning incense, an angle, Gabriel, appears. Naturally, Zechariah is a bit startled, because even in the weirdness of the Bible, angels aren’t just showing up on the regular to everyday people. But Gabriel comes with good news, the best news for Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth–they’re going to have the child for which they have been longing. And, in keeping with the history of longed-for children in the Bible, this one is going to be special, a “joy and delight” to his parents, filled with the Holy Spirit to bring back many people of Israel to the Lord and prepare a way for His coming. This is far from ordinary news. But Zechariah meets this news not with wonder, but with doubt. To this angelic proclamation, he attempts to apply earthly logic. And Gabriel is having none of it.  “I am Gabriel,” he says, “I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.” Zechariah would not speak again until Mary had come to see his wife, her cousin, Elizabeth, Jesus already in her womb, and his son, John the Baptist, leaping in Elizabeth’s womb in recognition of the Messiah. He would not speak until after John had been born, healthy and beloved, to this elderly couple. His first words spoken aloud in at least nine months, would be “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them,” wonder fuelling his hope as he saw one miracle come to pass and could now believe in the one yet to be fulfilled. 

I find the ocean extraordinary. It fills me with wonder. And yet, it is always there. It isn’t new; it’s normal, natural. It is everyday and commonplace. It is ordinary. And in that collision of simple with the magnificent, the earthly with the transcendent, I felt a surge of hope. Life had been hard, but it wouldn't always be. Some day there would only be good.

Christ entered into the brokenness of our world, fully God–extraordinary–and fully man–ordinary. A paradox. A mystery. We cannot comprehend it, regardless of how much knowledge we accumulate or how much reason we throw at it. All we can do is wonder. And in that wonder we find our hope. We may tie ourselves in knots, be hurt or disappointed by others, struggle to make sense of ourselves or the world. And yet, ultimately it doesn’t matter if we ever get ourselves untangled, if we ever understand how this miraculous Saviour could be and could love us, if our words are wrong or disappear in our throats, because like a wave to the shore “Christ comes with the January flower.” How can we not laugh?