Tradition, Truth, and Advent

I understand why so many people have disliked tradition and ritual. It's so easy for people to become caught up in the actions and symbols, forgetting the truth that they represent, that one might easily think those actions and symbols are more of a danger and a distraction than they're worth. After all, one can pray genuinely without kneeling or lighting a candle, and one can rejoice in the coming of Christ without sharing gifts or decorating trees. But, despite all the potential dangers of symbol and ritual (and despite all the personality books that say I ought to dislike traditions in general), I find great meaning and significance in them.

You see, the human mind does not remain at a level. We fight to raise it by reminding it of the truths we believe and by dwelling on the beauties and wonders of the world; if we neglect these duties, we slip back downwards into mental confusion, apathy, ingratitude, and joylessness. Like the forces of Gondor ever watchful against the enemy in Mordor, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a failure in our vigilance could mean the loss of a bridge or the desolation of a beautiful land - and the fight to regain and restore what was lost will almost certainly be harder and more bitter than the original fight to preserve what was already there would have been. So, paraphrasing Lewis, it is incredibly important to set before ourselves everyday some reminder of the essential core truth of our faith - to give us the eyes to see clearly the spiritual realities around us, to inspire us to live in the beauty and joy whose fulfillment we hope for in Christ, and to strengthen us with grace for the daily and hourly fight.

I would argue that tradition - if the reason behind it is remembered - can be an excellent way of setting before ourselves those truths that we most need to hear. Because we did not create the traditions, they often remind of us of those aspects of our faith that make us most uncomfortable, or that we would be most apt to forget, as well as those that seem most natural and pleasant to us. Because they have endured through the years, they have (often, at any rate) been honed and improved by generations of people striving to obey and know Christ more fully. Because they are inextricably intertwined with the physical world, they help us engage our bodies in our worship and faith; because they repeat every day or every year as time passes on, they help link eternal truth and beauty with the temporal world in which we live.

I have to admit that, despite my theoretical interest in and appreciation for the traditions of the faith, I don't actually put that many of them into practice (the side effect of growing up Protestant, probably). Every Sunday I go to church and partake of Communion (can I say in passing how much I love that particular tradition? To have weekly such a tangible and powerful reminder of Christ's sacrifice and love is such a blessing), and every Christmas season I light the candles of Advent - but that's really all I do. I don't want to add in more traditions just for the sake of doing them, of course, but if there are others that will give me the same encouragement, redirection, and hope as the traditions of Advent, then I would like to make them traditions in my heart and home as well. We'll see how things go. But for now, Advent is here! The season of hope and expectation, of remembering that God Himself has come to dwell among us, of longing for His return and the restoration of all things, has begun! Lift up your eyes to the heavens and see, with the eyes of memory or with the eyes of hope, the Light coming to the world to cast away our darkness.

O Root of Jesse

Today's antiphon remembers that Jesus is the eternal king of the nation of Israel, because He has come to reign forever on the throne of David as God promised to David himself so long before, and it also hints at the whole-worldliness of the salvation Jesus came to bring.

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before You kings will shut their mouths,
to You the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

In declaring Jesus to be the Root of Jesse, we are reminded of the greater picture of God's plan - we see the Incarnation in the light of history rather than as an isolated event coming unexpectedly out of nowhere. As God, Jesus sits on the throne of heaven; as man, He is rightful heir to the throne of David, and thus in His person unites the two thrones as a precursor to uniting the two kingdoms beneath them. It is symbolic of the reconciliation He makes between each of us and God the Father through His own body on the cross.

Similarly, by saying that the nations will make their prayer to Him, we see the future aspect of the event of the Incarnation. In the past, God was the God of Israel; in the future, He shall be the God of all peoples - and the great turning point was the life and death of Christ, who though coming of the house of David and the nation of Israel yet offered salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike through the sacrifice of His own body. We are no longer outside His walls; He has called us His people. The One who fulfilled all the prophecies, to prove His truth and faithfulness, has done a new thing: He has called all nations to Himself, and built His people from all the peoples of the world.

O Adonai

Today's antiphon recognizes God in His historical role towards the nation of Israel, for whom He is both the redeemer and the lawgiver:

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

Adonai, meaning "lord" or "master," is the name of God that most highlights the direct authority of God over our lives; more than merely pointing out the objective and philosophical authority of God over creation as the Creator, it emphasizes the direct and specific authority that God has over each of us (and our thoughts and our actions). He is our Master, our Adonai, and as such has the right to give us laws to obey, as He gave to Moses.

But the wonder of the first coming of Christ is that this purely magisterial aspect of our relationship with God has been colored with new elements - replaced, even, with the deeper love and intimacy of friendship and even marital love. As Jesus told His disciples, 

"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you." - John 15:15

And again in Hosea, in the middle of a beautiful prophecy about the restoration and redemption of Israel with the coming of the Messiah:

"'And it shall be, in that day,'
Says the Lord, 'That you will call Me "My Husband,"
And no longer call Me "My Master"'" - Hosea 2:16

The One who came with fire in the earth-shaking power of His holiness, who gave us the perfect and unattainable standard of the law, has also come with redeeming love, and made a way for us to become righteous and be reconciled to Him, that He should be our Husband rather than our Master. This great transformation of our relation to God is the purpose of the Incarnation and the promise of Christmas.

O Wisdom

Beginning on the 17th of December, the great O Antiphons are incorporated into the celebration of Advent. Each antiphon is a prayer for Jesus's coming, and begins with a different name for Him, and meditates on a different aspect of His nature and relation to us. So for today we read:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

What stands out to me in this antiphon is the juxtaposition of the words "mightily" and "sweetly", pointing out how in God strength and gentleness, power and beauty, peacefully and perfectly coexist. There is no imbalance in His wisdom: He both commands as a sovereign King and whispers as a tender Lover; He both builds the world as a scientist and designs it as an artist. To put it simply, in Him is the fullness of wisdom.

Candle of joy, candle of song

Tonight we light the third candle of Advent. Traditionally this candle is pink, or rose - the liturgical color representing joy, in contrast to the somber purple candles of the other three weeks denoting Advent as a time of repentance and preparation for the coming Messiah. In our house, to begin this week, we read Isaiah 35, which is a beautiful picture of the fulfillment of joy that will come to be on earth when Jesus returns, and of which we can see glimpses here and now since His first coming so long ago.

When Jesus returns, even the wilderness and the desert will sing with joy for the restoration and the healing that He will bring, for He will relieve their barrenness and cause springs of waters to gush forth from them and make their wasted lands blossom like the rose! If He is blessing even the physical inanimate earth with such life and beauty, how could He not bless its people also? In the following verses, we see that He does: the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will dance, and the mute shall sing!

And the redeemed of the Lord shall walk through the now-beautiful wilderness on the Highway of Holiness, on which no wicked man or ravenous beast may walk, towards the land of the promise and the presence of the Lord - towards our home and the place of our belonging. We shall walk with everlasting joy on our heads like crowns of splendor, and we shall be singing as we come.

While the fulfillment of this prophecy is still to come, I believe that it is, in a spiritual sense, in the hearts and lives of the people of God, foreshadowed even now. Where the Spirit is at work in the world, there life springs forth from what once was dead and barren, and the blind eyes of sinful hearts are opened to the truth, and our crippled spirits dance in praise to the God who has saved us. And as we follow Christ on the narrow way He spoke of in the Gospels, we figuratively walk on the Highway of Holiness, safe from the schemes of man and from the devil who walks about like a devouring lion, coming out of exile to the land where we truly belong, rejoicing in the promises and the home that await us at the end of the road.

He is the True Light coming into the world

"Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God." - Psalm 43:3-4

 He has sent forth His Light and His Truth into our world, in human likeness, as a baby born in poverty, and He does lead us by that True Light into the place where He dwells. From this all our joy comes: that God became man and dwelt among us, bringing light into our darkness and truth into the sea of lies surrounding us, that we might know Him and draw near to Him.

Candle of hope, candle of promise

This first week of Advent we light each night the candle of hope, to remember that we have an enduring hope in Christ in the midst of a broken world. On this first Sunday we remember specifically how God made the world good and very good from the beginning; all things were beautiful in their design and blameless in their function, and there was peace on the earth between animal and animal, and love between human and human. Shame had not yet shown its face, nor fear either, and men walked with God in the world He had created.

Into that beauty came a whispering voice of temptation and deception, and hard on its heels came sin and all the consequences of sin that we know too well, so that Adam and Eve hid themselves from God, and blamed each other for their disobedience, and were exiled from the garden with a curse that covered all creation with them. But in the middle of the curse came a promise, for our God is a God whose love is greater than our sin:

"And I will put enmityBetween you and the woman,And between your seed and her Seed;He shall bruise your head,And you shall bruise His heel.
[...] And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." - Gen. 3:15, 20

Even in the despair of their exile and in the midst of the terrible curses of pain and hardship and social disunion, Adam could place his hope in this promise of God, and trust that through Eve would come one bringing life to destroy the seed of evil and the bonds of death.

They hoped for Christ's coming; today we both remember that hope and its fulfillment in His Incarnation, and still continue to hope for His final coming and the ultimate fulfillment of His promises. The perfection and peace that creation once enjoyed is not merely a pleasant memory but is also a living hope, for it will be restored and delivered with us in Christ when our adoption is completed and our bodies are made new. This is why we hope so eagerly for His return, because only then will all the physical world He has made be renewed and redeemed as our spiritual selves are already, and His kingdom will be restored on the earth, and the groaning and sorrow of this earth will be replaced with joy. So we hope, and we persevere in our hope through all the doubts and troubles that accost us, considering His promises a worthy thing to hold on to.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." - Rom. 8:18