Not to be all Scrooge McDuck about it, but no matter how many lights go up and how many times I hear the Top Five Christmas Songs of All Time,1 it still isn’t actually Christmas time yet. Look, I’m as guilty as anyone of rushing the Christmas season along far before it’s good and ready, but the fact remains that Christmas begins with the Feast of the Nativity on December 25th, and continues for sixteen days until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (or, depending on which Catholic tradition you belong to, possibly only until the Epiphany on January 8th, but also possibly until the Feast of the Presentation on February 2nd. #LiturgicalCalendarWonkiness).
Which means that those of us silly enough to pay attention to things like the liturgical calendar are left with the question: what the heck is Advent, other than the time before Christmas? And what are we supposed to do until the 25th?
As I pointed out before, I’m not good at this. I’ve worn my Christmas jumper2 like six times already, and although I do have an Advent Spotify playlist, it hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as any of my five separate Christmas playlists3 this December. This is precisely why I am forcing myself to write about it.
I think we can learn a lot about Advent by contemplating Mary. She was, I think, probably the first person who was impatient for Christmas to arrive.4 Imagine what it must be like to be Mary. To be an unmarried, pregnant teenager, growing the Son of God inside of you for nine months.
Imagine saying “yes” to the angel Gabriel, and then being left alone inside your bedroom in the middle of the night, slowly realizing the scope of what it is that you’ve said yes to. In her fiat, Mary chooses God’s way, and configures her own will to God’s. She gives God a human nature; she lets the Word be incarnate in her; she brings Christ into the world. She freely chooses to do this, but she doesn’t necessarily choose where or when she is does this. Somehow, she seems okay with this. I, on the other hand, find it quite frustrating.
During Advent we are faced with the same question that Gabriel posed to Mary all those years ago: will you give God a human nature? Will you let the Word be incarnate in you? Will you bring Christ into the world?5 On most days, I want to say yes. But I usually have a caveat, and it often has to do with the where and when. I want to be like Mary, but I would prefer to do so only in places and times when it’s convenient for me.
Mary teaches us how to wait. Jesus’ prenatal existence illustrates the depth of his humanity: God becomes man, not in a sudden burst of fanfare befitting the arrival of a prince, but by gestating in the womb for the better part of a year. God, it would seem, is not interested in hasty shortcuts, which means Mary isn’t, either. And so the two of them wait together, the embryonic Christ and his mother. Mary joyfully anticipates the eventual birth of her son but also probably experiences discomfort and fatigue and random midnight cravings for avocados,6 and it is all, quite literally, worthwhile.
Still, I have a hunch that she, like us, may have had a restless heart.7 Just because she is happy to wait for God doesn’t mean she is perfectly at rest—she is, after all, a human being growing another human being inside of her. Augustine’s famous observation was that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. I think that true and total rest in God comes only with death, the moment at which there is truly nothing else but being with God.
Mary was intimately connected with God during her earthly life in a way that no other human being ever has or will be, but she still experienced restlessness. Restlessness is not sinfulness. Restlessness is good; restlessness tells us that something about our current state of being is not perfect, that all is not as it should be. This is one of the central claims Christianity makes about the world: it is not as it should be. We are eschatological beings, a pilgrim people on the way to something better.
The way that Our Lady deals with the restlessness from being on this journey is a major reason that she is, in the words of Wordsworth, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” She is restless, and while her restlessness drives her to action, she understands her role in the narrative of salvation history, and doesn’t try to do too much. We do not know the inner workings of her own will, because she submits to the will of God.
The imperfect state of things which begets our restlessness is precisely why it is important for each of us to be like Mary and do the work of bearing Christ into the world. Mary responds to her restlessness with hope and trust; she doesn’t seek to hurry things along to accomplish God’s will in the most convenient or efficient way, but instead patiently sits in the tension of literally waiting for God to be ready to enter the (postnatal) world.
As we’ve discussed, I am bad at being patient, and so my desire in response to this restlessness is to try and resolve it, as quickly and painlessly as possible. I want it to go away, and go away now, thank you very much.
The irony is that while I, a mere human without any control over time, would prefer to speed things up, God is perfectly happy with the machinations of time as they are. God loves with urgency, to be sure. The Incarnation is a bold move, the very concept of which scandalized Jews and Greeks alike. However, as Mumford & Sons tell us, urgency is not haste. All will be set right, to be sure. Christ will come in glory and make all things new, but not when I say so—no matter how early I put up my Christmas tree.
I suppose God is, unsurprisingly, like Tolkien’s wizard: he is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to. And if I find that my time does not match up with His, then my only choice is to wait, to stand here in my restlessness and be restless and get used to it.
In this Advent season, I am called to be like Mary: to give God a human nature by allowing the Word to be incarnate in me and, in doing so, to bring Christ into the world. The challenge is that, like Mary, we must learn to be patient, as this labor bears fruit in His time and not our own. And so, we wait.
1 For the record, there are two divisions: Religious (1. O Holy Night, 2. While Shepherds Watched, 3. Joy to the World, 4. Angels We Have Heard On High, 5. O Come All Ye Faithful) and Non-Religious (1. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), 2. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, 3. All I Want For Christmas Is You, 4. Step Into Christmas, 5. Do They Know It’s Christmas); yes, I am willing to fight and/or write a separate blog post about it.↩
2 Yes, fellow Americans, I know it’s a sweater, but jumper sounds nicer. #IrelandProblems. ↩
3 “Christmas Music,” “More Christmas Music,” “Folksy Christmas,” “Classic Christmas,” and “Christmas Jazz.” I know, I have a problem.↩
4 I wouldn’t exactly call myself an expert on what it’s like to be pregnant, but based on the intel I’ve gathered, it’s at least mildly uncomfortable.↩
5 Full disclosure, I stole these questions from Cardinal Dolan’s excellent 2013 Notre Dame commencement address.↩
6 According to official Catholic teaching, Mary gave birth without the normal pains of childbirth by virtue of her special state of grace. I hope I am not in error by suggesting that the rest of her pregnancy was marked by normal human experience, and if I am, then disregard the avocado joke.↩
7 Editor’s Note: “Oooooohhhh he said the name of the blog!”↩
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