Historians can trace the observance of Advent, the time leading up to Christmas, back to at least 480. For more than 1,500 years Christians have set apart the month before Christmas to focus on the coming of the Messiah. It was a time to turn to God recalling His coming in flesh, and also to pray for Him to come again. They said special advent prayers, lit candles, and added another day of fasting to their spiritual practices. It is only in the last hundred or so years that the time before Christmas has focused instead on finding gifts and indulging in food-related pleasures, becoming the frantic, over-scheduled, pressured Christmas season we know today. I am contrary enough to think that just because some choose to adopt the modern way, it doesn’t mean I have to follow along if it isn’t feeding my soul and bringing me closer to my loving Father.
Many churches have liturgies that are said during Advent. These prayers have changed very little over hundreds of years. As we say them, we join not just with the larger church on earth today longing to see the return of our Lord. We also join with our brothers and sisters who have gone before us and now worship in the throne room of God. It is one of the ways I find to connect with the “communion of saints” we speak about in the Apostles Creed as we run our segment of the race.
One of the older prayers for advent to contemplate:
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness,
and put on the armor of light,
now in the time of this mortal life
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;
that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge both the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.