There's a dual focus to the season

The reverend extraordinaire Nicholas Lubelfeld is our resident sage on all things theology, especially when it comes to the Anglican tradition. As is his common way, Nicholas helps us lean into the season with tender hearts and endearing humility.

Transcript

Advent has a kind of a dual focus, and the focus of Advent is the first coming of Christ in preparation for celebration of his nativity and the second coming of Christ in preparation for the fuller coming of Christ. There was originally a little longer period of preparation for Christmas, which in the churches of what's today France looked toward the preparation for the coming of Christ, the second coming. At the same time, there was an abbreviation of that eventually in Rome, was focusing around the preparation for the celebration of his first coming.

So what's happened is that recently, in the last decades of the 20th century, those two comings of Christ are celebrated in the new church calendar by telescoping them together so that after All Saints' Sunday, which is the last of the big deal, red letter, holy days of the church here at the beginning of November, there is an increasing emphasis in the Bible readings on the second coming of Christ and what that means and how we may prepare for it. Then those reach a crescendo on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and then from then ... And that concentrates very fully on the second coming of Christ. But then there are two Sundays that talk about the person and the work of John the Baptist. And then a final fourth Sunday about Mary in preparation for Christmas and the celebration of Christ's first coming and Epiphany, his manifestation.