First Sunday of Advent
The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent captures the whole meaning of the season: expectation of our deliverance from darkness.
Tomorrow, we enter into the liturgical New Year and the beginning of the fasting season for Christmas: the First Sunday of Advent. The season of Advent can be considered a sort of Lent-lite. On the one hand, it is penitential, dark, and sad. This is why, for example, we may have greenery in our homes, but we are not turning on festive lights or having tasty sweets and meats. Instead, we slowly commemorate the Light coming closer by lighting one candle of the Advent wreath for each Sunday of Advent, and we abstain from meat and fast from everything but our main meal and collation.
On the other hand, however, this season is marked by great expectation of the great Feast Day to come: the Nativity of Our Lord, the Lux Mundi. There is a greater joy to it than Lent, and it expects a ‘lesser’ (so to say) Feast than Easter. This is seen in the Advent fast being shorter (4 weeks) and the fasting being less rigourous (only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays).
In the season of Advent (as has been written at length elsewhere), we focus on the two Advents of Our Lord: his first Advent in the Manger and the second Advent in the End. Before the first Advent, the world was in the darkness. Even the faithful dead were in the darkness of Hades, though comforted by their hope in the Light to come, who would deliver them to Paradise. Likewise, as we await the second Advent, we are in a ‘vale of tears’ in this life and even upon death await our resurrection, though comforted by Our Lord’s mercy in both of these states.
The Collect for Advent I highlights these elements of the Advent season.
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy 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 quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
This Collect comes form the first Book of Common Prayer (1549) and is a composition of Cranmer. It masterfully ties together the themes of our present heaviness, our expectation of Christmas, and the great hope. In the first clause, it calls to mind the penitential nature of Advent, that we take a special effort to put on the new man, our growth into the fulness of Christ. The second clause focuses on the reason for our fasting: to prepare for the Feast Day of Our Lord’s Nativity, who likewise (though, without the darkness of sin) humbled himself for our salvation (notably, this involved fasting). In the third clause, the great Christian hope is presented. This is not merely avoiding hell or even having an eternal but our own resurrection at the Last Day, to a joyful life in Christ. Of course, the Collect concludes with one of the standard Collect endings.
In fact, this Collect so well captures the season of Advent that it is said for every day of Advent, the Prayer Book equivalent of the commemoration of the Advent Feria in the Roman Rite.
The Latin of the Collect also provides an interesting feature for our reflection.
Da nobis, quæsumus omnipotens Deus, ut abjectis operibus tenebrarum, induamur arma lucis, in hac mortali vita, in qua Jesus Christus Filius tuus cum magna humilitate ad nos visitandos advenit, ut in extremo die, quo rediturus est cum gloria Majestatis suæ, ad judicandos vivos et mortuos, resurgamus ad vitam immortalem. Per eum qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Sancti Spiritus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
We see here both the initial Advent ‘ad nos visitandos advenit’ and also the second Advent, which is really not a disconnected Advent but a return: ‘rediturus’.
It is notable that this Collect is quite different from the Sarum/Roman Collect for the First Sunday of Advent.
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power, and come, that we may be accounted worthy to be rescued by thy protection; from the threatening dangers of our sins to be set free by thy deliverance. Through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Prayer Book Tradition returns the ‘stir up’ language (which has its own liturgical importance). However, it is seen on the Sunday Next Before Advent, a feature of the pre-Advent season, found also in the Sarum/Roman Collect for the same. It is not focused so much on the season or the Feast Day to come as much as it focuses on our reliance on God’s grace for our deliverance from sin.
I pray that your Advent fasting and preparation for Christmas may be fruitful.