During Advent we wait and anticipate. Not impatient waiting. Not waiting–in–line at a checkout counter. Not waiting with nervous anticipation as we scan obligations filling our social calendar.
This is not the nervous waiting we experience in a dentist or doctor’s office. Rather we wait in stillness with a peaceful heart—with quiet contemplation that nurtures awe. We wait in anticipation of a quiet moment of reverence.
When we fail to wait with a peaceful heart in reverent silence, Christmas slips past as a non-event. We are left wondering what was all the commotion about? Is that all there is?
We are left feeling alone and lonely, and we experience the sadness of dashed expectations. Our anticipation has been anti-climatic. Rooted firmly in worldly events we are surrounded by joyous celebration that somehow does not seem all that joyous.
Such an experience of “Christmas missed” arises from failing to discern what exactly it is that we await. What is it that will come silently, invisibly, and fleetingly into our lives, often exiting before we truly grasp its presence? In missing Christmas we miss the Presence itself.
Our anticipation should lead to a divine moment when the Incarnation’s promise creates a spark that ignites a fire deep in our soul. We wait for the moment when the promise and revelation embodied in Christ’s incarnation over two thousand years ago becomes the movement of the Holy Spirit. We wait for the moment when the Light of the World chases away darkness.
We do not wait on a vague recycled memory of an event that took place long ago. Rather, in the silent and holy night, we witness the Presence that fulfills the promise of the sacred birth and makes Christ’s love as real today as it was on the hallowed night we celebrate.
We await fulfillment of the promise that stands outside time and throughout all time. We mark the day and time of our observance on the calendar but it is a promise that never fades with the passage of time.
We set a date, December 25th, on which we plan to open ourselves to divine love. But that love is always incarnate in the world, patiently awaiting our embrace. The Always Present Love of Christ waits for our arrival when, on bended knee, we allow the birth of love to take place in our heart.
Saints have spoken of this unceasing incarnation of love in our hearts:
[B]oth Augustine and Bonaventure know that the Church which hopes for peace in the future is, nonetheless, obliged to love in the present; and they both realize that the kingdom of eternal peace is growing in the hearts of those who fulfill Christ’s law of love in their own particular age. Both see themselves subject to the word of the Apostle: ‘So there remain faith, hope, and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love’ (1 Cor. 13,13)” — Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure
So we wait in anticipatory stillness and contemplative awe. At the same time Christ waits on us. He waits for us to open the door so divine love can fill our hearts. We transcend time and kneel before a manger that is just as present today as it was on the eve of Jesus’ birth. As we kneel we invite the Light of the World to shine upon us and through us. Our waiting encounters His waiting and the resulting divine moment bursts into being some time around December 25th.
