Last weekend we celebrated the First Sunday of Advent and began our new liturgical year. From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website:
Beginning the Church’s liturgical year, Advent (from “ad-venire” in Latin or “to come”) is the reason encompassing the four Sundays (and weekdays) leading up to the celebration of Christmas.
The Advent season is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and also to the anniversary of the Lord’s birth on Christmas. The final days of Advent, from December 17 to December 24, focus particularly on our preparation for the celebrations of the Nativity of our Lord (Christmas).
Advent is very similar to Lent in that it is a time of preparation and prayer. I urge you to pay attention to the liturgy because it teaches us about this seasson. The liturgical color changes to violet, the Gloria is omitted, the sanctuary is very simple, and the only thing adorning the altar is the Advent wreath.
This is done on purpose.
We are in the period of waiting and longing for the coming of Jesus. The liturgy and the liturgical environment should help us experience this. When you come into the church and you feel that there is something missing and a longing for something much greater, then the liturgy and the liturgical environment is doing what it is supposed to be doing: it is helping you get into the spirit of Advent.
However, every year I will have at least three parishioners come to me very upset, demanding to know why we do not have flowers, Christmas trees, and all sorts of other decorations in our sanctuary.
I realize that we are competing against the likes of Target, Macy’s, Costco, Nordstrom, Ralphs, etc., who have had Christmas decorations up since Halloween.
However, those are Christmas decorations and we are in the season of Advent.
So our altar is kept simple, leaving us with a sense of longing.
But I promise you, on Christmas Day we will have Christmas trees, poinsettias, manger scenes, and all sorts of Christmas decorations filling our entire sanctuary and church celebrating the glorious coming of Jesus Christ into the world.
And the day after Christmas, when Target, Macy’s, Costco, Nordstrom, Ralphs, etc., have put their Christmas decorations away and put up Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day decorations, our Christmas decorations will continue to remain in the church — the entire Christmas season — until the Baptism of the Lord, which this year is January 10, 2016.
In the meantime, we celebrate Advent and we prepare our hearts through prayer and emptying ourselves so that we can be filled with the glory of the newborn King on Christmas Day.
The article above was written by Father Patrick Moses, pastor of St. Irenaeus Church in Cypress. He addressed it to his Parishioners this weekend.
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