City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style. It’s —and the purple candles intrude, to the somber tune of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Not quite Christmastime in the city.
Advent is about waiting, we are told. Waiting to bake gingerbread cookies and trim the tree and hang the wreath and pull out the Frank Sinatra “Jolly Christmas” CD. And waiting to burn low the Advent candles and put the baby in the manger and celebrate the birth of Christ. Advent is about waiting for four long weeks, while everyone else drinks eggnog and makes merry.
But, as God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas reminds, waiting for the Nativity is not simply about penitence, and it is scarcely about passivity. Edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe, this new book walks through Advent and Christmas day by day, with reflections, prayers, and stunning classical artwork. Among the contributors is Fr. Neuhaus, who sets the reader on the path to Bethlehem with his meditations for Advent’s first week. The book is well worth adding to your library—and keeping on your nightstand for the coming weeks—but here’s a taste in the meantime:
We are all searching, and ultimately—whether we know it or not—we are searching for God. Ultimately, we are searching for the Ultimate, and the Ultimate is God. It is not easy, searching for God . . . . The fact is that we do not really know what we’re looking for or who we’re looking for. Almost a thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury said, “God is that greater than which cannot be thought.” . . .God is, quite literally, inconceivable. And that is why God was conceived as a human being in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Because we cannot, even in thought, rise up to God, God stooped down to us in Jesus, who is “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”
As we are searching for God, the good news is that God is searching for us. Better yet, he has found us. The great question is not whether we have found God but whether we have found ourselves being found by God. God is not lost. We were, or, as the case may be, we are . . . .
We are forever seeking, while the forever for which we seek is now. Awaken to the truth that any place contains every place and every moment contains eternity. And that is because Christ is Emmanuel, the One whom the Book of Revelation called the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end . . . . He is the Word of God who called into being everything that is or ever has been or ever will be. He is the One in whom past, present, and future are always now.
In short, Advent is about actively awaiting Christ’s coming—daily searching for God. The great question is not whether we have found God but whether we have found ourselves being found by God. He does not wait to find us. We need not wait to be found.
