Praying Through Advent

Advent is the four Sundays before Christmas, and it is a season of waiting.

This puts it in direct conflict with the month it occupies. December is organised around anticipation of a very different kind — parties, deadlines, spending, and Christmas music from the second week of November. Advent asks for something almost impossible in that setting: to not yet be celebrating.

That difficulty is not a flaw in the season. It is most of what the season has to teach.

What Advent is about

Two arrivals, not one.

The first is the obvious one: the coming of Christ at Bethlehem, and the long centuries of expectation before it. This is where the Isaiah readings come from, and the Magnificat, and the prophecies the gospels quote.

The second is the one that surprises people who open the lectionary in the first week of Advent expecting mangers and find judgment instead. The early Advent readings are about Christ's coming again — the last things, the day nobody knows the hour of, the call to be awake. Advent begins at the end.

The season is older in its penitential form than in its festive one. It was a fast, in some places of forty days, which is why the colour is violet and why the Gloria is traditionally omitted until Christmas. Something is being held back.

The four weeks

The common modern scheme gives each Sunday a theme — hope, peace, joy, love — attached to the candles of the Advent wreath. It is a relatively recent arrangement and not universal, but it is a serviceable spine for four weeks of prayer.

Week one — hope, and the end of things. Readings on watchfulness and the coming judgment. Isaiah 2:1–5, Matthew 24:36–44. The prayer of the week is essentially: keep me awake.

Week two — peace, and preparation. John the Baptist, the voice in the wilderness, the road made straight. Isaiah 11:1–10, Mark 1:1–8. What in me needs levelling before anything can arrive?

Week three — joy. Gaudete Sunday; the rose candle, the lightened vestments. Rejoice in the Lord alway (Philippians 4:4–7). A deliberate pause in the middle of a fast.

Week four — love, and the annunciation. Mary, the angel, the yes. Luke 1:26–38 and the Magnificat. The season narrows to one room and one person.

Keeping it

Mark the start. Advent begins on a specific Sunday; it is not a mood that descends in early December. Light the first candle, read the first Sunday's gospel, say aloud that the season has begun.

Ten minutes a day, at the same hour. In December, the hour is what protects it. A practice that floats will be crushed inside a fortnight.

Use the appointed readings. The Sunday lectionary gives you the season's shape without any work; the Daily Office supplies a daily one. Left to choosing, you will read the nativity narratives from the first week and the season collapses into Christmas.

Keep a wreath, or something like it. Four candles, one lit each week, is a small and effective structure — visible, incremental, and it makes the waiting something the room does rather than something you have to feel.

Hold something back. Not a full fast, but something: the decorations later than everyone else, the carols kept for the twelve days, one evening a week left clear. Advent only works if something is being withheld.

Pray the O Antiphons. From 17 December, the seven ancient antiphons — O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O King of the nations, O Emmanuel. One a day to Christmas Eve. They are the source of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and they are in the prayer book. The last week of Advent has nothing better in it.

Advent in a difficult December

For a great many people December is not festive. It holds an anniversary, an empty chair, a diagnosis, or simply the accumulated exhaustion of a year — and the obligatory cheerfulness of the month is a weight rather than a comfort.

Advent is unusually well suited to this, and it is worth saying plainly. It is a season about darkness and waiting, about people who have been promised something and cannot see it yet. Its readings are not cheerful. The people that walked in darkness is the season's sentence, and it does not pretend the darkness is not there.

If Christmas is hard, Advent may be the four weeks of the year that fit best. Keep it as a fast rather than a countdown, and let the waiting be real.

Common questions

When does Advent start?

On the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, which falls between 27 November and 3 December. It runs to Christmas Eve, so the season is between twenty-two and twenty-eight days long depending on which day of the week Christmas falls.

What are the four themes of Advent?

Hope, peace, joy and love, one for each Sunday and each candle of the Advent wreath. The scheme is relatively modern and not universal — some traditions use the prophets, John the Baptist and Mary instead — but it is a useful spine for four weeks of prayer.

What is the purpose of Advent?

Preparation, in two directions: remembering the long waiting before Christ's birth, and looking toward his coming again. It is traditionally a penitential season, which is why its colour is violet and why the early readings concern judgment and watchfulness rather than the nativity.

What are the O Antiphons?

Seven ancient antiphons prayed one a day from 17 to 23 December, each addressing Christ by a title drawn from the prophets — O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O King of the nations, O Emmanuel. The hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is a verse translation of them.

How is Advent different from Christmas?

Advent is the season of waiting before the feast; Christmas is the feast, and it begins on 25 December and runs twelve days to Epiphany. The wider culture reverses this — celebrating through December and stopping on Boxing Day — which is why keeping Advent takes deliberate effort.