The Roman Liturgy: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
“Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.”
The Roman Liturgy
An ongoing series of standalone pieces about the Roman liturgy, hope and the crisis in the Church
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Christ the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ’s Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ’s Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?
Summary: The Advent liturgy encourages us to long for Christ’s final triumph, emphasizing hope and joy in his glorious second coming. This longing cultivates detachment from worldly hopes and reinforces the theological virtue of hope. This way of looking at things not only inspires true resignation, but also dispels false resignation and quietism, points the faithful towards true action, standing firm in the faith and helps us anticipates the imminent glory promised in the Advent season. Image by Fr Lawrence Lew OP, CC 2.0.
The Roman Liturgy
Advent
Advent and the preparation for absolute victory
In the previous parts we looked at the frequency with which the Advent liturgy point us towards Christ’s glorious coming at the end of time. We considered the different attitudes seen today towards Christ’s second coming, ranging from fear to hope.
The conclusion that we have been drawing from the liturgical texts is this:
The Church wants us to long for the final coming of Christ with hope and joy, and she uses the season of Advent to train us in this longing.
Looking forward
This is quite a different paradigm to one in which Advent is only a catechetical period for telling our children about the Nativity story, and in which we are longing and praying for something that has already happened.
It is also different to a paradigm in which Advent and Christmas are about our personal union with Christ by grace. This union is essential to the Christian life, and supremely important for the eternal fate of every human being – and no doubt Advent makes us focus on this in a special way, through having us meditate on Christ being born into our hearts.
But we must also reckon with the fact that the Church’s liturgy has us call, again and again, for Christ to come to us in power and majesty – and that these calls are not presented as mere imaginative or personal sentiments, but with the urgency of a living, societal reality.
The twentieth century liturgical theologian Fr Johannes Pinsk suggests that all the liturgical prayers which the Church places on our lips “would be nothing more than empty and almost unbearable phrases” if they only referred to the historical birth of Christ; and he insists that they are all too universal, public and communal to refer only to his coming into our individual hearts by grace.[1]
He continues:
“I cannot admit that for four weeks the Church prepares her priests and faithful in the most intense way for the coming of Christ, making them count the days, keeping them in the strongest tension on Christmas Eve with the opposition of ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’, if in the end all this would only lead to a change of psychological attitude on our part, to a pretence of going back in time. In any case, the Church must be taken seriously, especially in her prayer.”
As I have already said, this is not a call for us to replace Nativity scenes with depictions of the Last Judgement. There is nothing wrong with catechising our children, or meditating on the patriarchs, and certainly not with calling Our Lord into our hearts. We want all these things – especially the latter.
But we also want something ecclesial and public – the social reign of Christ the King today, and his ultimate triumph at the end of the world. And even if we shrink from the longing for the terrible day of Christ’s second coming, we might be able to see these texts as referring to the public vindication of Christ’s mystical body amidst our current crisis.
Surely we all want this. We want the star to shine over the stable and manger, showing where Christ lies today, in his mystical body; and we want everyone – whether they be shepherds or kings – to recognise him and reverence him in this mystical body.
But we can leave such considerations of Christmas and Epiphany for now – and instead consider how an Advent spent in longing for the final triumph of Christ may be a great consolation in our time of chaos and even secular tyranny.
An end of false hope
It is not possible to pray for Christ to come in glory, every day for four weeks, without ourselves being changed. Surely we cannot spend this time proclaiming that the Lord is near to us and will soon come in glory, without coming to believe these truths – and perhaps even living accordingly.
It is famously held that “the law of prayer determines the law of belief” – which latter in turn determines how we live our lives. Pius XI explicitly draws our attention to this in his encyclical on the Kingship of Christ:
“[P]eople are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year — in fact, forever.
“The church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.”[2]
Surely spending an Advent looking forward to the final triumph of Christ will strengthen the theological virtue of hope within us – that virtue which resides in our will, giving us the certainty that we will finally arrive at our destination, providing that we do not ourselves depart from the road.
Pinsk writes:
“[B]y the very fact that this manifestation is presented to us in the most vivid and attractive colors, it kindles in us an immense desire.”
This desire, and this true and holy hope, can displace that worldly hope, which Pinsk calls “a kind of bourgeois optimism, which is so common today.” It can purify even that hope which we have for the defeat of evil in this world, and the triumph of Holy Church – hopes which can otherwise become too close to the temporal hopes of the Jews in the Gospel.
The great desire for the advent of Christ inculcated in us by the Church’s liturgy should detach us from the worldly city, and direct our hearts towards our true city, the City of God. This desire should make us less and less rooted in this world, and more and more in the Kingdom of Christ.
In fact, this is what we are taught by Christ’s birth in a stable; and it appears again in the liturgy on the Second Sunday of Advent:
“We who have been refreshed by the food of spiritual nourishment, humbly beseech You, O Lord, that through partaking of this sacrament You will teach us to disdain the things of earth and love those of heaven.”
(Postcommunion of the 2nd Sunday of Advent).
The heart of the Gospel?
When we reflect over the world-changing events of the last few years, this detachment and “disdain for earthly things” has never been more necessary in our lives than it is today.
Many of us have never seen such open and naked wickedness in the world. Hitherto, such wickedness took place behind closed doors, or was presented under some pretended guise of goodness.
But ever since the physical masks went on several years ago, the proverbial masks have been off.
It has never been easier or more necessary to wait, to prepare, to long, and to call for the advent of Christ, as it is presented throughout the liturgical texts. Now, more than ever before, we need to be reminded of the closeness of Christ, and the imminent glory promised in the Advent liturgy.
Natural hope – even for truly good things – has always been a means by which tyrants exercise themselves upon us. It is this natural hope – for worldly freedom, to be with our families, that evil will leave us alone – which so often paralyses us. It is by such hope that tyranny has expanded its dark pall over societies in the past. Our recent and current situation is no different.
Once a tyrannical machine has established itself, the only hope – paradoxical though it may sound – is for us to give up all such hopes and to live as if we are already dead. But this is no pessimism: this is the message of the Gospel and the New Testament:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5.3
“Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matthew 6.33
“[W]hosoever will save his life shall lose it: for he that shall lose his life for my sake shall save it.” Luke 9.24
“[W]e are buried together with him by baptism into death: that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.” Romans 6.4
“In all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God: […] as dying and behold we live; as chastised and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as needy, yet enriching many; as having nothing and possessing all things.” 2 Corinthians 6.4-10
We are to be full of hope and life – but full of the theological virtue of hope, not with a vague optimism that everything will be alright; and full of the life of grace now, not woth some vague expectation that we will survive the death of our bodies.
Observing the season with our eyes on the coming of Christ may denude us of attachment to the goods of this world, and help us put aside the false hopes which give tyrants (be they spiritual or temporal) their power over us. We can recall the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, talking of the necessity of such an attitude amongst the victims of tyranny:
“Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble. Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.”[3]
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True action
Longing for the Parousia and a detachment from worldly hope are not meant to be resignation to the triumph of evil. Féret writes:
“Here again we must be on our guard lest an anaemic form of Christianity mistake the point of this teaching.
“There are believers who resign themselves far too easily to the apparent triumph of evil in our midst. Their faith affirms the omnipotence of God, exalts the rights of his holiness, and the predestined purpose of all things to share in the praise and glory which the elect shall offer at the throne of God, yet they creep through the world like poor relations, more as if they were apologising for their faith than giving fervent testimony of its victory over the world.
“Perhaps they imagine that by this attitude they are prolonging the Passion and its attendant humility (we may have doubts as to whether this is the best way to set about it); but certainly they are not giving evidence before the world of the clear, triumphant morning of the Resurrection!”[4]
Again, this recalls the striking words of Cardinal Newman quoted in the last piece:
“Instead of aiming at being a world-wide power, we are shrinking into ourselves, narrowing the lines of communion, trembling at freedom of thought,[5] and using the language of dismay and despair at the prospect before us, instead of, with the high spirit of the warrior, going out conquering and to conquer.”[6]
Against a false resignation and quietism, Féret points us to the saints in the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse, who cry out to God in a loud voice, asking him how long he will wait to execute vengeance upon the wicked. “Looking at things in the light of God,” says Féret of this call, “it is not normal, from the Christian standpoint, that evil should go unpunished.”[7]
True resignation does not entail an abdication from acting in the here and now, and from taking whatever practical steps are necessary. In fact, in the silence and stillness that comes from this detachment, we will be more able to see which steps to take.
We can return to Féret again:
“It is always the same teaching that John gives to the persecuted Christians.
“Do not be discouraged, he seems in effect to say: hold your heads high. Your cause is just, and not only just, but destined to be victorious and very terrible for your enemies. Every new blow that you receive is another and more terrible punishment in store for those who injure you.
“The whole of heaven, which knows the requirements of true justice, will not cease demanding of God and his Christ that these demands be satisfied.”[8]
When we think of the apparently endless persecution which the early Christians faced at the time of the Apocalypse, we can see why Féret summarises it like this:
“The Apocalypse, which derived its penetrating light from heaven, revealed plainly the hard realities of their struggle; but it also threw its heavenly light on the outcome, and gave them the courage to see themselves as they were in Christ – as unvanquishable victors.”[9]
This spirit of the Apocalypse is also the spirit of Advent in the Roman liturgy.
Conclusion
At Matins on the Second Sunday of Advent, the Church takes the name of Jerusalem to herself and sings:
“Thy salvation cometh quickly, O Jerusalem; why art thou wasted with sorrow? Is there no counselor in thee, that pangs have taken thee? Fear not, for I will save thee and deliver thee. For I am the Lord, thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. Fear not, for I will save thee and deliver thee.”
“O, thou city of Jerusalem, weep not, for the Lord hath repented Him concerning thee. And He will take away from thee all distress. Behold, the Lord shall come with might, and His arm shall rule. And He will take away from thee all distress.”[10]
Throughout Advent, the Church attributes such passages addressing Jerusalem to herself, thus emphasising the corporate, ecclesial nature of Christ’s promises. Amidst the customary stress, worry and “solicitousness” of organising Christmas logistics, we can perhaps smile at the innocence of Gaudete Sunday, when we sing “nihil solliciti sitis” (“be nothing solicitous”). But it is in the Church and with her that we should celebrate Advent – not in the solicitousness of the world’s Christmas logistics, nor in individual devotions alone. Pinsk says:
“Only in the Church, through her and with her is it possible to celebrate Advent. The world, as such, is incapable of doing so.”
The Church’s liturgy calls Christ to rule over her, calling him the King, Prince, Deliverer, and Lord of Vengeance. She calls him not to just rule over her, but over the whole of society and the whole world:
“Behold, there cometh the Lord, our defender, the Holy One of Israel, wearing a royal crown upon His head. And His dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.”[11]
(Fourth responsory of the Second Sunday of Advent)
“Thou, Bethlehem, art the city of the Most High God, out of thee shall He come forth that is to be Ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting, and now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth. And this Man shall be the peace in our land, when He shall come. He shall speak peace unto the Gentiles, and shall have dominion from sea to sea.”[12]
(Second responsory of Gaudete Sunday)
If we spend Advent longing for the final triumph of Christ, we cannot help be mindful of his right to be King over our societies today.
“In times like our own,” Pinsk adds, “when collective life is entirely secularized, when everything that concerns the religious life is more and more thrown into the exclusive private sphere, it is a duty to affirm this role of the Church through the word and the pen.”
Let us recall that “God hath not given us the spirit of fear: but of power and of love and of sobriety.”[13] We are not called to retreat quietly into enclaves and hope to be left alone. As Pinsk said, we are “a chosen army, sure of its triumph and of its future victory”; and as Féret said, we are “a fighting regiment [that] knows that its commanding officer is there, sharing the smoke and the heat of battle.”[14]
We are already assured of the triumph, and are merely cleaning up the remaining skirmishes of the war. At any moment, the final decisive victory is to be won. In the meantime, however, let’s spend Advent watching and praying for the coming of Christ, and calling out to him:
O come, O come, Emmanuel!
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
Further Reading:
Fr Henry James Coleridge – The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days
Fr H.M. Féret OP – The Apocalypse of St John
Dom Prosper Guéranger – The Liturgical Year
The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces about the liturgy, hope, and the crisis in the Church
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Passiontide I: The Silence of Passiontide
Passiontide II: The Composure and Agony of Passiontide
Holy Week: Maundy Thursday and the Stripping of the Church
Holy Week: Good Friday and Christ’s Royal Throne
Easter: Faith and Failing to Recognise the Church
Ember Days: The Privilege of the Ember Days
Trinity Sunday: Explaining the Holy Trinity simplyChrist the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ’s Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ’s Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases through our Amazon links. See also The WM Review Reading List (with direct links for US and UK readers).
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[1] This essay draws on the observations of Fr Johannes Pinsk (1891-1957). Fr Pinsk was involved with the twentieth century liturgical movement in ways that many readers would consider regrettable. However, his 1933 essay ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’ has a wealth of interesting information about Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, which I would like to share. It also contains some things which we, as traditional Catholics, would either reject or consider suspect. My purpose here is to present what is good, along with some comments, and so to help us pass a profitable Advent. Johannes Pinsk, ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’, from Liturgische Zeitschrift Jahrgang, 1932-33 and reproduced in the Bulletin Paroissial Liturgique n. 1, 1938. This version is a DeepL translation from the Spanish version reproduced in El Que Vuelve, Vortice, Buenos Aires 2018, an available at https://engloriaymajestad.blogspot.com/2016/09/la-venida-del-senor-en-la-liturgia-por.html. Due to the difficulty of locating a physical copy of this text and giving correct page numbers, I will not clutter the text with references to it.
[2] Pius XI, Encylical Quas Primas, 1925, n. 21. Available at https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius11/p11prima.htm.
[3] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago Vol I, Harper Perennial, London 2007 p 130
[4] H.M. Féret OP, The Apocalypse of St John, trans. Elizabethe Corathiel, Blackfriars Publications, London, 1958, p 100
[5] It is abundantly clear from Newman’s other writings that “freedom of thought” here has nothing to do with the liberal conception of the idea.
[6] John Henry Newman, Letter to Miss Bowles, 11 November 1866. In Wilfrid Ward, Life of Cardinal Newman, Vol. 2, p 127. Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1912.
[7] Féret 101
[8] Féret 101-2
[9] Féret 24.
[10] First and third responsories from Matins from the Second Sunday of Advent, taken from Divinum Officium. https://divinumofficium.com/cgi-bin/horas/officium.pl
[11] Fourth responsory of the Second Sunday of Advent, Divinum Officium.
[12] Second responsory of Gaudete Sunday, Divinum Officium
[13] 2 Timothy 1.7
[14] Féret 61