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By Glenn CJ Byer, MA SLD Advent
is an interesting time, a time between that first Christmas and
forever in Christ, and the prayers today are designed to help us grasp
the reality of this time. The entrance antiphon and the opening
collects focus our attention on the God who is to come. We will be
filled with joy, we need to prepare, to cast out anything that is evil
in order that we can welcome Christ at his coming. This focus on the
second coming is one of the important aspects of the Christian advent.
We hope and expect the Lord to come at any time. We live advent lives,
waiting for that great and glorious day, when all will be set right.
The preface for Advent I, which is the preface assigned to this day
likewise keeps our eyes on the end times.
But what is interesting is that the prayer over the
gifts and the prayer after Communion act as a corrective, lest we
think that God is not here, that Christ is only coming at the end of
time. God sustains our lives now, feeds us now, and if we stand on the
ramparts as the Communion antiphon suggests, we can even make out the
joyful procession of Christ's arrival.
An interesting way to bring greater balance to these
two aspects would be to introduce the more earthly concerns in the
penitential rite by using form A which focuses on our need for change,
and to use Eucharistic prayer II with its reduced focus on the earthly
reasons for praise. There is no reference to creation and only a
limited attention to what we are doing now; we simply focus on God as
the source of all holiness and the Spirit that comes upon the gifts
and upon us.
© 2008, OCP. All rights reserved.
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