The sun shall be no more your light by day

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the
moon give light to you by night; but the LORD will be your everlasting
light, and your God will be your glory.”
Isaiah 60:19

The earliest known mention of Christians observing the Nativity on 
December 25 is in a Roman calendar for the year 336. By the middle of 
the 5 th century, most of the churches both East and West were keeping 
the feast on this date. In the northern hemisphere at least, the December 
date made sense pastorally and theologically, if not historically. 

Mid-December (21-23) is Yuletide—the Winter Solstice.  During the 
preceding months in the northern hemisphere, the sun has moved further
south and the days have grown darker and colder. Pagan peoples marked
this period of the waning sun as a time of foreboding, a time when old 
“ghosts” (troubles of the past) could be dealt with and exorcised in 
apprehension of Yule. The Winter Solstice marked the change from 
darkness to light as the sun began its long journey northward.

Pastorally speaking, the growing Christian church recognized some of 
the traditions of the yule season as positive and hopeful. The concern for
familiarity after conversion and the striking similarity to Christian 
theological realities, made December 25 th  perfect for the "Christ's-Mass"
celebration. The pagan rites pointing toward new life with the new light 
were Christianized to reveal the One  True Light. Nature worked in 
tandem with the revelation of God made manifest as the Light of new 
life in the Christ child—who pierced the darkness.

​Spiritually speaking, the coming of God in the flesh is indeed the dawn 
of a new light, the dawn of this new creation, where, as God did in the 
beginning (Gen. 1:3), God speaks into the darkness and illumines it with
the radiance of his Word.

Like all celebrations of the Church, the Nativity simultaneously looks 
back into history and forward into the promised life to come. History 
and future promises, in fact, come together in one liturgical celebration, 
where they are realized as one present reality. We experience this every ​

Sunday during the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist, preceded by 
contemplative prayer, envelopes us as the moment of light. Jesus' Body 
and Blood shed for us on the Cross and offered to us at the altar unites us
to Jesus at the spiritual level and manifests the light of the incarnation 
within us. Advent is our time to embrace this reality as we exercise old 
ghosts anticipate new life.

Christmas is the celebration of God’s Incarnation in you; his coming to 
lay in the manger of your heart, to illumine the darkened soul and body 
with his wisdom and glory. If we take Christmas at all seriously, we have
to take its inner, spiritual meaning seriously. And if we take this spiritual 
meaning seriously, we have to take Advent seriously, because Advent is 
precisely the time when we prepare our souls and bodies to receive the 
Lord.

The world's commercial emphasis encourages us—no, demands— that 
we forget about this season of preparation and focus.  It would have us 
begin the Christmas celebration before its due time. Unprepared, and 
unable to perceive its true significance, we are pressured to celebrate a 
phantom. 

Advent teaches us that the Christian life consists first in purgation, and 
only then, illumination. First, there is a barren desert, and only then a 
Promised Land; first a cross, and only then a life redeemed. As with Job 
(1:9), every Christian will eventually face the long trek of faith through 
the desert, where the pleasures and consolations of this world fail and 
only God’s grace can suffice. This is the practice of the Advent season, 
given us as a gift from the Church’s storehouse of spiritual wisdom.

Advent is not a time for bright lights and feasting. It is not a time for 
indulgences of the flesh, the kinds of indulgences that serve to 
strengthen the hold of spiritual darkness and ignorance on our souls. 
Advent is a time to clear away distractions, to reaffirm our commitment 
to follow Christ not only away from the throne of glory into the flesh, 
but from the flesh into intercessory suffering on behalf of all. Advent is a
time of self-emptying, that we might be filled not with a glory of our 
own making, but with the spiritual glory of God.​

As much as possible, then, deny the glitter of the marketers, the 
advertisers, the media-genies, the pushers of goods and superficial good 
times. Instead, dig deeply into your faith, entrusted to you that it might 
bear fruit. The Church, where her teaching is sound, asks us to practice 
Advent by fasting, by almsgiving, by self-scrutiny and confession, by 
spiritual study, and by vigils of prayer. If you must, set up your 
Christmas decorations as you anticipate the coming of Christmas, but do
not lose Advent in the process. The time for celebrating will come, but 
now is still (in every sense of that term) the time of growing darkness in 
which, soon we receive the Light.

Embracing the darkness,
​
Fr. Bill 
​