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Hallo again to all.
The ancient church in its wisdom understood something about focus. We're persuaded more and more that one of the purposes of liturgical seasons is to rearrange and tighten our focus at specific times of the year on various aspects of our spiritual life. One of the oldest traditions of the liturgical year concerns the topics appointed for preaching on the four Sundays of Advent: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The contrast between the solemnity of these subjects and the prevailing attitudes of reindeer-themed mirth is significant, and makes them perhaps more valuable than ever as counterweights to what we see and hear each day. Our hunch is that the eschatological foci provided by the old lectionaries are meant to prepare us internally for meeting God very soon—not metaphorically, not in a sweet turn of phrase, but really meeting the real and living God.
Whatever primates and blogs may do and say in the coming weeks, the virgin is still pregnant and there is still a long, hard walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The sound and fury of church politics online do their best to hide this old, old story into which we must live if we will call ourselves Christians. We're sure that if our forerunners in the faith knew about the internet they would have included the wrong or inordinate use of it along with food and drink in the catalogues of things to be moderated at times of fasting and abstinence. If you must continue to click and scroll in the weeks that remain before Christmas, turn some of your attention to a few of the fine Advent calendars we have been delighted to visit of late. Our favourites are from Full Homely Divinity, Paperless Christmas, and Mount Calvary Church, Baltimore, Maryland. With the O Antiphons and a little more patience, we're confident that they'll help to reset your focus and ours away from imagined Canterburies and toward one real star-illumined Bethlehem. See you next week. |
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