Advent is Near...

My favorite Christmas show is the delightful Charlie Brown Christmas, and each year as a child (I think the show premiered when I was about 9 or 10) I looked forward to the ONE showing on network television. What a treat it was - more so because I had to wait for it. Now, the show is streamed on demand and I can watch it as many times as I want, whenever I want. Somehow, it doesn't have the same impact.

As we prepare to begin the season of Advent, I thought about the experience of waiting. Advent, of course, is a time of watchful waiting and preparation for the great celebration of Christmas - our Lord's birth. Advent is a distinct liturgical season - it's not Christmas, and provides yet another example of the ways in which Catholics are called to be counter-cultural. Our society doesn't seem to tolerate, any more, the notion of waiting.

I love 100.3 as much as the next person, but do we really need all Christmas music, all the time, for nearly two months?


We've become a fast food culture - and we expect to be entertained, all the time. We see it in school (this is hard, so why do I have to do it? This is beyond my comfort zone, so I won't try); and we see it in church (I don't like that sermon, I didn't understand it, the music is too old-fashioned).

Perhaps Advent is calling us to stop, wait, reflect - and swim upstream against a culture that demands immediate gratification. Understanding, deeply, the miracle of  Christmas, takes time and patience and hard work. It should - this is the greatest News of our world.