by Fred Moleck
The Wane of Advent
Advent is an exercise in double think. We have the scream of the malls purveying winter festival goods, a.k.a. Christmas shopping. We have the readings urging us to prepare the way of the Lord. We have no Gloria at Mass, but an Alleluia. We have the cr�che and the cross in the back of our planning minds.
Is it any wonder that we music ministers find it necessary to make a strong decision every morning to figure out just what we are going to do about it all?
The undercurrent in all of our deliberations and quasi-schizoid life is the enormous national and ecclesiastical crises we've been going through for the past fourteen months
We have had to deal with the sexual misconduct battles, the terror of the snipers and their cousins, and the secret demons that occupy the minds and hearts of those who fall into incredible depression during this time of year.
Our liturgy insists that we celebrate the promise of the better kingdom Isaiah's peaceable kingdom foretells. Just when the glimmer of that promise rises in our liturgical psyche, another bunch of people get blown up in Jerusalem or Bethlehem or any place mentioned in Scripture.
We live in both realities.
The Advent liturgy provides, with our help, the still voice of calm, which assures us that our task is an honorable one. We are not schizoid. We are ministerial.
We lead our people in watching and waiting, but not without cheer. We do have in December the feast of St. Nicholas to rationalize a non-Christmas party during the party-free season of Advent.
Nathan Mitchell in the pages of a GIA Quarterly a couple of years ago calls the Advent parties celebration of the winter now that the harvest is over and "all are safely gathered in." It does sound like a great reason to have a few friends over for mulled wine or Dr. Pepper, even if we haven't participated in the harvesting of crops and binding them in sheaths and tares.
A party-oh, all right, a post-harvest gathering-on the feast of St. Nicholas could help soothe our frazzled nerves after a day at the mall or one of those streets of boutiques in a town near you.
In another ancient issue of the GIA Quarterly, Thomas Talley reminded us that Christmas shopping indicates the one time so many people go out into the market place to buy something for some-one else. We become surrogate St. Nicholases . . . or is it St. Nicholii?
It's a pity that the dance of light in Advent never caught on in the United States. This little-known ritual on St. Lucy Day, December 13, is a strong tradition in the Scandinavian countries, where a bunch of Aryan-looking maidens perform a ritual movement that involves a diadem of candles placed on the girl's head.
Sounds and looks awfully dangerous, but so far there is no report of cranial conflagration. Light in the darkness is always a sign of hope. Lux aeterna, and all of that.
Perhaps that light ritual should encourage us during this season of dark brooding. We could all become "paesphorus," givers of light-not just gawkers at "light-up night."
Carry the light. Carry it in the carols, in the psalms, in the four thousand rehearsals facing all of us, and do try not to drop it in these waning days of Advent.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net