Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which marks the beginning of a new year in the church calendar.  (Last Sunday was Christ the King Sunday, a recent addition to the church calendar that mostly only liturgical churches celebrate.)

As I understand it it, low church Christian that I am, Advent is about waiting on two levels: the first level as a remembrance of the time prior to the birth of Jesus and the second level as a way of looking forward to His return.  The hope, I think, is that one would prepare us for the other (though I fear that sometimes our nature won’t allow much for that).  The way we treat the themes of the season, though, make it easy to turn things into an extension of Christmas, mainly because we may not know how, well, to wait.

One of the main images of the season is light (made obvious by the candle-laden wreaths that many churches light each week).  One could argue the prevenient image is that of darkness, which the light dispels more and more each week.  These last few days leading up to Advent, I’ve been thinking about the darkness that comes from blindness.

One of the last Gospel readings prior to Advent was from Matthew 20:29-34:

²⁹ As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. ³⁰ Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”

³¹ The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”

³² Jesus stopped and called them. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.

³³ “Lord,” they answered, “we want our sight.”

³⁴ Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.

Meanwhile, the friars of the Poco a Poco podcast recently returned from a months-long sabbatical.  They started back up with a discussion of a Franciscan Lent, which is a kind of extended Advent season.  One of the best things about it is their return to the Beatitudes as a way of thinking about the core of the spiritual life.  Last week I landed on the episode on the sixth Beatitude (found in Matthew 5:8): Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.  The friars had a lot to say on the topic, but at the heart is the Advent hope of seeing, and we can only truly see because we have light.

We’re not big fans of sitting in the dark, and understandably so.  But then we don’t take much time to understand the darkness we were in.  Even, in some ways, are in still.  Maybe we can only understand things well when the darkness has been dispelled (which can be its own tricky disposition).  Maybe we can only fully understand hopelessness when we have hope (which is for most the first candled-theme of the season)?  The story of the two blind men moves quickly- no mention of spittle and mud and people “looking like trees” for these two men.  I imagine they still had to learn to live well with sight . . . in the light.  And I imagine sleeping in the dark took some getting used to, as well (and with it, the fear that maybe they had momentarily lost their sight again).

Just some thoughts for the beginning of the season.  It’s one of my favorites, mostly because it sinks its hooks well into the human condition and points us towards where real light, and real hope, exist.  I look forward to a new candle’s-worth of light each week.