Tag Archives: Advent

Mary and Advent (Or, Why Legos Just Don’t Satisfy the Infinite Thirst for God)

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My kids are into Legos right now. They are perhaps not my favorite toy, to which the bottom of my foot will testify.Legos

But Legos—excuse me, interlocking brick construction systems—are at least an interesting case-study in human desire. To wit: Kid A desperately wants Lego Set X. He thinks, speaks, and dreams of Lego Set X. He obtains Lego Set X—rejoicing! He constructs Lego Set X. It’s fun.

On the day after comes the Great Letdown. Onto desiring Lego Set Y!

We adults may not try to fill the God-hole in our hearts with Lego sets. Then again, maybe we do.

Or perhaps we go for more Grow out of legossophisticated alternatives. Like the iPhone 6. Or the right job. Or the great relationship. But we are still just overgrown kids, vainly throwing Lego bricks into an infinite hole and wondering why we still feel lousy.

 

All of this points to the providence of having the Feast of the Immaculate Conception right smack in Advent, on December 8. The season of Advent these days has become the time to advert to our infinite desire for God amidst and despite the relentless consumerism of December. The purity of Mary, which is the product of her Immaculate Conception, releases her to drink deeply from the only well that satisfies human thirst: the truth and love of the triune God.

Mary fully allows the Father to achieve what Fr. Robert Imbelli in his beautiful book Rekindling the Christic Imagination calls “Christification”:

Christians are called not merely to the imitation of Christ but to participation in his own life, gradually becoming transformed from their old self to the new self, recreated according to the image and likeness of their Savior, who loves them and, in the Eucharist, continues to give himself for them.

The icon is the Mother of God of the Inexhaustible Chalice, a classic Russian icon. Mary calls us to come and drink from that chalice that never runs dry, the eternicon 3al, self-giving love of her Son Jesus. Like Christ arising from the chalice, so are we, as little Christs, resurrected into the newness of Christian life by his Eucharist grace. The Christification that God has achieved in Mary, he wants to do for each of us. What Mary has allowed God to do for her, she wishes us to experience through her maternal care. And we will, if we say fiat as she did.

This, then, is the hope of Advent: the hope of transformation into Christ, the satisfaction of those infinite longings for the triune God. This is the hope we bring to others. “The New Evangelization is not about a program,” Fr. Imbelli writes, “but about a Person and about participation in the new life he enables.”

As cool as Legos are, that’s much, much better.

Angela Franks teaches theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online.

 

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I am very glad to be posting on this day, the first Sunday of Advent, because it affords me the opportunity to meditate on a theme which one seldom hears preached from the ambo but upon which our very salvation rests! This theme, of course, is Christ’s return (parousia) in judgment over the living and the dead on the last day (eschaton).

ChristMost Christians, and many non-Christians for that matter, could easily identify Jesus’ resurrection is the central belief of Christianity. In fact, it is only in the light of Christ’s resurrection that other Christian dogmas, such as the Trinity and Incarnation, can be seen as revealed truths. But what is often obscure is the meaning of Christ’s resurrection for us. Jesus’ resurrection is the “first fruit,” i.e., the sign and the promise, of the transformation that awaits all of creation (cf. 1 Cor 15:23-24). To put it plainly: a heaven of disembodied spirits is not our ultimate destination. Our ultimate destination, what we hope for, is the transformation of the entire cosmos, God’s Kingdom on earth, and our own resurrection into eternal life.

The celebration of Christ’s first coming at Christmas ought, therefore, to make us “groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23). Just as at the birth of an earthly prince, an heir to the throne, we might anticipate the time when he finally rules over his kingdom, so too do we anticipate at Christmas the time when Christ’s Kingship (last Sunday) will be manifest “on earth as in heaven” (Mt 6:10). The Preface Prayer from today’s Mass reminds us that this is the fulfillment our hope.

For he assumed at his first coming the lowliness of human flesh,

and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago,

and opened for us the way to eternal salvation, that,

when he comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest,

we who watch for the day may inherit the great promise in which we now dare to hope.

One might say that our very lives while here on earth are preparation for the Kingdom. Jesus’ own Gospel proclamation announced its arrival. “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15; cf. Mt 3:2). Jesus’ life, his teachings, and the grace which he bestows upon us through the sacraments of the Church, are all preparations for this Kingdom; a Kingdom which will only be consummated at his return. In this regard, all Christians are called to be Echatological Christians; that is, Christians who pray and long for Christ’s return. We are all called, with St. Paul, to pray “Marana tha” (1 Cor 16:22), which means “Our Lord, come,” or, as elsewhere in the NT, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).

Sistine ChapelThus, perhaps for reflection on this First Sunday of Advent, we ought to ask ourselves: Do I pray for the coming of the Lord or would I prefer that he take his time in returning? Have the goods of this world captured my imagination so that, in my everyday life, I have made them ends in themselves rather than means to my salvation? Do I live St. Paul’s exhortation to “not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of [my] mind” (Rom 12:2). Will the Master of the house arrive and find me sleeping, at rest with the comfortable life I have made for myself? In today’s Gospel Christ reminds all of us to be prepared for his return at any and every moment. “Watch!” (Mk 13:37).

Anthony Coleman teaches theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online.

 Don’t miss Saint Joseph’s College Online faculty (and blogger!) Susan Timoney presenting a webinar through the Catholic Apostolate Center on December 2. Click here for details!