Rorate, caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

According to a group of bishops (who shall be nameless) Advent is not, except chronologically, a preparation for Christmas. This comment, as Hercule Poirot might have said, gave me furiously to think. Unfortunately the bishops did not go on to unpack this paradox of truly Chestertonian proportions, and so I was left with my thoughts. Of course Advent is a preparation for Christmas; and yet I do see what their Lordships might have been getting at, and I am inclined to agree. If Christmas is the celebration of a past event, even one a momentous as the irruption of God into our world, it hardly makes sense to prepare for it. What are we preparing for? A celebration of an anniversary of a past event does not warrant four weeks of preparation, though you might be forgiven for believing that it needs it, from the material point of view at least, if you venture into any town larger than Bonchester Bridge.

Christmas is not the commemoration of a past event, any more than Easter is. In the case of Ester, that is perhaps a little more obvious. Christ, who rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, still lives his resurrection life; if we have been baptised, we have been baptised into his death; we have died with him and we will rise with him. Christ’s death and resurrection are taking place every day, which is why it is so appropriate to have baptisms at the Paschal Vigil.

What we should be doing during Lent is coming to our senses and trying – before Easter dawns – to cleanse our souls so that they are worthy to join our Lord in that event which is ceaselessly happening. It happens every Sunday, every day, and every instant in the timeless dynamic of God; but we cannot live at such a pitch all the time. So once a year we prepare properly for what we do not prepare for during the rest of our lives. Apparently Dr Johnson used to spend the entire year in preparation for his single yearly reception of the eucharist. I’m not suggesting that we should restrict ourselves to that extent (though it might do us no harm, occasionally, to wait until we are actually hungry for it and realise what it is and what it is to be deprived of it), but that is the right attitude. It is also the right attitude to Lent, and to Advent, which have more in common with each other, and with the now almost vanished tradition of fasting before receiving the eucharist, than we usually realise.

Christmas, Easter, and the eucharist: all three are occasions when our life of time slips into God’s life of eternity, where the earthly event of a moment is inserted into the perennial event of heaven; they are, as I remember once saying of the post-Resurrection appearances, heaven “where-ing” itself on earth. I argued that in the case of the post-Resurrection appearances, Jesus did not so much “come down” to earth. He is, always, everywhere, and in some mysterious way (mysterious only to us, not to God; we must never lose sight of the fact that what seems mysterious, crazy, impossible, contradictory to us, especially while we are still on our journey, is perfectly clear and straightforward to God). It was simply that by a special dispensation his apostles became able to see him where he was anyway. I think something of the sort is true of Christmas. Not – most certainly not – that something did not happen – and on earth – at Christmas. the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was genuinely born of the Virgin Mary according to the flesh. But at every subsequent Christmas something equally real happens, but to us, not to him. We have the possibility of becoming present to the Event which, according to our chronology, took place 2000-odd years ago. Genuinely present, as present as the shepherds. We are not commemorating something past at Christmas, we are present at something present.

And that is why I do, and do not, agree with their Lordships the Bishops. If you see Christmas as a commemoration of a past event, then Advent cannot and must not be seen as a preparation for it. Advent is a liturgical season of great importance, second perhaps only to Lent. It cannot end in an anti-climax; then it would be better to regard it as the preparation for the coming of Christ to each of us: at every moment, and at the hour of our death. That is certainly on of the functions of Advent, though I believe it to be a very secondary one; as a liturgical season at a specific time of the year, it must primarily lead to an event also at a specific time of the year, as does Lent: both are liturgical seasons leading to a liturgical event which springs from a moment when our string of events slips into the perennial event of heaven. But if we see Christmas as one of those two moments, that moment when we are inserted into the eternal moment of the Incarnation, then Advent is precisely a preparation for that.

I am told – don’t quote me on this – that the Orthodox, on the feast of the Annunciation, pray that the Blessed Virgin will say “yes” to the angel. Does that sound absurd? It seems to me to be eminently sensible. Each time we come to the Annunciation, the event is truly happening. Mary has said yes; but by praying that she should do so we join ourselves to those generations of the just who prayed for the coming of the Christ through the long centuries of the Old Dispensation. Not only does our prayer express more perfectly than anything else our complete conformity with, and our complete joy in the plan of salvation as it has turned out, but it has weight with God, who transcends time. I greatly regret the disappearance of the feast of the Expectancy of Our Lady towards the end of Advent. I believe that Mary herself in heaven is in a state of expectancy every year, not of the physical birth of Christ but of that moment when we are at one with her, present at the Incarnation, the coming of the Messiah, when the dews of heaven fall on the earth. It is up to us to show him how much we desire that moment, a moment not of commemoration but of heaven becoming – briefly – one with earth.

See, O Lord, the affliction of thy people, and send him whom thou hast promised to send!