Day 14 of Advent...

In praying through the Psalms of the Advent season, I have discovered ~ again ~ the beauty and wisdom of God being revealed in liturgy.  Sadly, both the Reformed and Roman traditions have discouraged a deep understanding of God's revelation in the liturgy over the years ~ albeit for very different reasons. And the result has caused a collective liturgical illiteracy as well as the atrophy of our theological imaginations. For example, rarely is it clear that the heart and soul of this liturgical season is Epiphany ~ not Christmas. Thomas Keating writes:

Epiphany is the crowning feast of Christmas. We tend to think of Christmas as the greater feast, but in actual fact, it is only the beginning. It whets our appetite for the treasures to be revealed in the feasts to come. The great enlightenment of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery is when we perceive that the divine light manifests not only that the Son of God has become a human being (the Incarnation), but that we are incorporated as living members into his body. This is the special grace of Epiphany... The Song of God gathers into himself the entire human family past, present and future... and the whole of God is now available for every human being who wants him... for this is the invitation to become divine. (p. 16 The Mystery of Christ)

Consequently, the flow of the liturgy between Advent and Epiphany does the following:

+ Advent invites us to become pregnant ~ to watch and wait and nourish the Spirit within and among us ~ and prepare a place of the coming of Christ.  It is NOT a time for feasting or festivities, but rather a season for simmering and brewing and a quiet growing excitement. Gertrud Mueller-Nelson writes that the outward ceremonies and symbols of Advent prepare us for something unexpected:

With quiet excitement, we go about those simple gestures that ratify the mystery about to take place. In ceremonies we deal directly not with thoughts but with actualities. We help ourselves to see again, in the outward sing, the inner truth. If we are awake and if we live the earthly process, we will feel what is inner and hidden. We make the wreath and light the candles and we gain the courage to stop the wheeling and dealing of our outer life: to sacrifice the wheels that grind away in our heads, the endless rationalizations... the wheels that grind away at outward progress at the cost of peace and justice in this world... the wheels that dial and roll and spin and swirl and drive us to distraction. The sacrificed wheel of the Advent wreath encourages us to stop and wait.

+ The outward, it would seem, helps us ready our inner realm for the arrival of God's light in a new and unexpected way at Christmas.  And given the profound darkness within and among us, the liturgy asks us to take some time to get ready for the light:  this is Advent.  Then there is Christmas ~ and as Keating says so wisely:  all we can do "on Christmas night is gasp in wonderment and rejoice with the angels and the shepherds who first experienced the Light."  We cannot comprehend it yet ~ it will take time and quiet reflection and practice to grasp this blessing ~ and that is what can happen if we attend to the liturgy between Christmas, the Feast of Epiphany and onward until Lent.  "The coming of Christ into our conscious lives is the ripe fruit of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery. It presupposes a presence of Christ that is already within us and waiting to be awakened... so that we might grow in divinity."

+ No wonder that the celebration of the Christmas Light moves directly into the liturgical anguish of Lent:

In the light of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery, we perceive that union with Christ is NOT some kind of spiritual happy hour. It is a war with the powers of evil that killed Jesus and that might kill us, too, if we get in their way. Because we live in the human condition, the divine light is constantly being challenged by the repressive and regressive forces within us as individuals and within society, neither of which wants to hear about love ~ certainly not about self-giving and sacrificial love.... And so we gather in worship ~ liturgy ~ to be empowered with the energy to go on showing love no matter what happens. (Keating)

With the Roman world wrestling with the new Sacramentary ~ steeped as it is in pre-Vatican II theology ~ and the Reformed realm dominated by mega-churches celebrating the prosperity gospel of Mammon it is small wonder that fewer and fewer "christians" grasp the wisdom of the liturgy.  I give thanks to a new generation of Evangelicals like Shane Claiborne (check it out @ http://www.thesimpleway.org/shane/) and the New Monks (check it out @ http://www.newmonasticism.org/index.php) as well as the brothers and sisters of Taize (@ http://www.taize.fr/en_article5806.html) who are reclaiming a liturgical spirituality for the 21st century.

To my way of thinking, they are part of the Holy One's renewal first celebrated in part one of Psalm 126:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,^*
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.