The Advent \/ Christmas cycle is a liturgical time of light in the darkness.\u00a0 In the Northern hemisphere, at least, it is also a time of solar light reaching a nadir and resuming a climb to its peak.\u00a0 The solar change is gentle and gradual at most latitudes; daylight lengthens by minutes each day.\u00a0 There is no transition from eight hours of sunlight one day to eleven hours the next day.<\/p>\n
At a Mass, the light is gentle.\u00a0 The altar is flanked by candles; candles are used in opening processions and in the procession of the Book of the Gospels to the ambo.\u00a0 At the Easter Vigil, the fire burns bright in the darkness outside the church building but the conquest of the darkness inside the church takes place gently as taper after taper is borne into the nave.<\/p>\n
We mark at Christmas the meek entry into the world of the Light of the world.\u00a0 With an unambiguous nod to the kenotic hymn of Philippians 2, the collect of Christmas Mass during the Day refers to Christ who \u201chumbled himself to share in our humanity.\u201d\u00a0 As one song puts it, \u201cthe child who played with the moon and stars \/ waves a snatch of hay in a common barn.\u201d[1]<\/p>\n
Gentleness, yes, but as the monks of Weston Priory sing, \u201cin the stillness of the night your Word \/ leapt into our city of turmoil.\u201d[2]\u00a0 There is a leaping here, a suddenness as in the leaping of the beloved in Song of Songs 2, bounding over mountains, a passage that was among the options for readings on 21 December.\u00a0 In Scripture generally, the phrase \u201con that day\u201d typically heralds a newness, a dramatic inbreaking.\u00a0 The phrase \u201con that day there will be a great light\u201d appears in the entrance antiphon for the first three Tuesdays in Advent.\u00a0 Though it makes no reference to light, the first reading on 23 December, from Malachi 3, asserts that \u201csuddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek.\u201d<\/p>\n
God\u2019s gracious condescension to our estate, which we recall during this season, is also the intersection\u2014the collision\u2014of two different worlds.\u00a0 Poet Shemaiah Gonzalez speaks of the Advent waiting in anticipation.<\/p>\n
Pleading, begging, wishing, longing, hoping
\nFor the light to overtake the darkness.
\nAs in the beginning,
\nWhen the earth was formless, void.
\nWhen darkness covered the surface of the deep,
\nAnd light crashed through.[3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\nRecalling Christ\u2019s nativity, we know that the light crashed through with ineffable tenderness and unfathomable power.\u00a0 And yet, as the monks at Weston added, in the stillness of the night \u201ca man was born, a man of peace and not of war, \/ revealing hopes yet unfulfilled.\u201d[4]<\/p>\n
Let us commit ourselves again (and again and again) to fulfilling those hopes so that with God\u2019s grace \u201cthe light of faith, which illumines our minds, may also shine through our deeds\u201d (collect for Christmas Mass at Dawn).\u00a0 May our deeds be characterized by the ineffable tenderness and unfathomable power of love.<\/p>\n
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