One of the lessons we learn in life as we mature is that the anticipation of a good thing is joyful in itself. In fact, sometimes, the joy-filled anticipation is actually better than the arrival of the thing we were hoping for. (I think this helps to explain that really depressed “let down” feeling so many people feel on December 26th, or January 2nd, after the Christmas and New Year’s holiday are over).
The Church in her wisdom has tried to preserve that sense of joyful anticipation at the coming of Christ during the Advent season. Of course, in this modern secular age, when so many people see Christmas as nothing more than an opportunity to make a buck, it is quite a colossal battle to try to preserve that sense of waiting: the stores, radio stations, networks, cable channels, and more are filled with music and goods trying to show us that the Christmas celebration is already here. For anyone with children, we can see the foolishness of this. It would be a little bit like giving your child his birthday present early and his birthday cake the week before his birthday, instead of letting him enjoy that building expectation as you remind him that his birthday is just a few days away. When he got to his birthday, he would have nothing left to look forward to!
The Church puts the brakes on that “jumping the gun” in her liturgical life and during this season sings of the joy of waiting for Christ to come (while the secular world is already singing that it is “the most joyful time of the year” and we should be decking the halls with boughs of holly, etc.).
She has a rich treasury of Advent hymns and carols that speak to this joyful waiting. Everyone knows “O Come O Come Emmanuel” – perhaps the most well know of Gregorian chants in an age when Gregorian chant is not very popular in Catholic Mass any more. (It should be: Vatican II recommended that this chant be given a pride of place at the Catholic Mass, but that is a story for another column.) But there are many more beautiful hymns that also make good Advent prayers for us to help us to increase our appreciation for Christ’s coming at Bethlehem – and increase our joyful anticipation of His coming again, or encountering Him at the end of our earthly lives.
One of my favorites has always been “O Come Divine Messiah!”, a traditional 16th Century French Advent carol. Here are the lyrics (English translation). Hope you enjoy them.
O come, divine Messiah! / The world in silence waits the day / When hope shall sing its triumph, / And sadness flee away. [Refrain:] Dear Savior haste; / Come, come to earth, / Dispel the night and show your face, /And bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O Christ, whom nations sigh for, / Whom priest and prophet long foretold, / Come break the captive fetters; / Redeem the long-lost fold. [Refrain]
You come in peace and meekness, / And lowly will your cradle be; / All clothed in human weakness / Shall we your Godhead see. [Refrain]
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