Yesterday, on the Christian liturgical calendar, a new year began: it was the first Sunday of Advent. Sadly, Sophia, for the first time ever, so overslept that we missed Sunday morning worship. (Yes, we’ve missed for several other reasons as well; but she’s at least been the reliable alarm clock, until now.)
Every year I hope for this season to be full of life-transforming meaning, and every year, I feel like I barely grasp hold of some fleeting thoughts about the season before we’re suddenly unwrapping presents, shouting Happy New Year, and back to work.
What I’m hoping for, what I’ve missed year after year, is an Advent and Christmas season which is “eye-opening.” St. John said Jesus’ coming into the world “enlightens everyone.” Jesus himself said that our eye is the lamp of the body; a good eye results in a body filled with light.
In other words, we have a vision problem. We don’t see the God, ourselves, or the world rightly. The Pharisees didn’t see it rightly. Herod didn’t see it rightly. We don’t either. Philip Doddridge recognized the need for a transformed vision when he penned his Advent hymn, “Hark the Glad Sound, the Savior Comes”:
He comes from thickest films of vice
To clear the mental ray,
And on the eyes oppressed with night
To pour celestial day.
Advent is remembering the darkness that preceded the light, the oppressive night that preceded the celestial day. It’s about the gaining of a transformed vision – the kind of thing that turns upside down the way we look at the world and the way we live in it. I’m praying this is not another Advent that goes by in a blur, for blurred vision is all that will result.
