Advent 2015

THE ADVENT SEASON – INTRODUCTION
 
ICCS-EM together with ICCG-E prepared for you Advent meditations and activities, which could be used for your own personal meditation as well as tool for your scouts and guides. We decided to choose the theme “Impelled by the Spirit”. This beautifull  theme gives us opportunity to follow the pope Francis and the church while revising the past liturgilcal year of  Consecrated Life as well as the new year of Misericordious.
 
Blessed Advent Period!
 
Petra Adamuskova, ICCG-E & Antoine Maksoud, ICCS-EM                                           
                            
 
1. Advent means ‘coming’.
 
During advent we look forward to the coming of Jesus. At the end of Advent, on Christmas Day, we celebrate the feast of the coming of Jesus – the birth of the baby in the stable at Bethlehem.
 
The period leading up to Christmas includes the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, known as the mid-winter solstice. Before the coming of Christianity most people celebrated this period of the year with a festival. These ‘pagan’ religions celebrated the re-birth of the earth, the fact that the days had stopped getting shorter and that spring and new life could then be looked forward to. The Christmas celebration replaced these older celebrations. Early Christian missionaries ‘christianised’ these pagan feasts celebrating new life in the child Jesus.
 
 
 
2. A season of expectation and preparation: Maranatha’ – ‘Our Lord, come!’ (1 Cor 16.22)
 
Advent is a season of expectation and preparation, as the Church prepares to celebrate the coming (adventus) of Christ in his incarnation, and also looks ahead to his final advent as judge at the end of time. The readings and liturgy not only direct us towards Christ’s birth, they also challenge the modern reluctance to confront the theme of divine judgement:
 
Every eye shall now behold him
robed in dreadful majesty. (Charles Wesley)
 
The Four Last Things – Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell – have been traditional themes for Advent meditation.
 
The characteristic note of Advent is therefore expectation, rather than penitence, although the character of he season is easily coloured by analogy with Lent.
 
The anticipation of Christmas under commercial pressure has also made it harder to sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness but the fundamental Advent prayer remains ‘Maranatha’ – ‘Our Lord, come’ (1 Corinthians 16.22).
 
Church decorations are simple and spare, and purple is the traditional liturgical colour. In the northern hemisphere, the Advent season falls at the darkest time of the year, and the natural symbols of darkness and light are powerfully at work throughout Advent and Christmas.
 
 
3.  The liturgical meaning of Advent Season
 
With this Advent season, the Church’s liturgical life moves into cycle C, which is the year of the Gospel of Luke. Advent is a threefold season which celebrates the historical Jesus born over 2000 years ago, Christ’s presence with us today through the celebration of the sacraments and the anticipation of Christ’s second coming.
The Advent season is marked with a spirit of reconciliation, promise and hope. It is certainly a season of prayerful watching as we prepare ourselves to receive Christ in our lives.
Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, which is the Sunday nearest November 30, and ends on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24). If Christmas Eve is a Sunday, it is counted as the fourth Sunday of Advent, with Christmas Eve proper beginning at sundown. Therefore, this year, Advent begins on Sunday, November 29, 2015 and ends on Thursday, December 24, 2015. The Christmas season then continues on till Jan. 10, 2016, with the celebration of the Baptism of our Lord.