The Season Changes, But Much Remains The Same

The season is about to change. This weekend, after Thanksgiving, the Christian church moves from the long liturgical season of Pentecost, know as Trinity when I was a child, to the short one of Advent.

The season called Advent begins a new liturgical year and lasts for the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. Spiritually, it’s a time of anticipation and preparation for Christ’s birth. Practically, it has become a time of parties, concerts, shopping, wrapping gifts, decorating, and preparing to celebrate the Christmas holiday.

The Altar Guild and clergy will put away Pentecost’s green cloths and vestments, green being the color symbolizing hope, abundance, and the victory of life over death. They will drape the altar with either blue or purple hangings, and clergy will follow suit with their vestments, blue signifying not only hope, but also innocence, birth, and good health, purple standing for penance, preparation, and sacrifice.

An Advent wreath with four candles will be placed on a high table at the foot of the chancel. On candle will be lighted each Sunday until all four are giving off light. Everything will look as it always has, and that’s where the similarity with Advents past ends.

On the day-to-day side this year, the color green didn’t quite deliver on hope. It remains to be seen if blue will fulfill its message of good health. The numbers today are not looking good as we continue to live in a time of purple’s sacrifice.

Anxiety had eclipsed joyful anticipation this year. COVID fatigue has often replaced good choices. We’re not preparing for gatherings with friends or rehearsing for the musical offerings we’re used to that lead up to Christmas. We can’t usher in this season of renewal together.

That was reinforced yesterday in the face of high and increasing local infection rates. My parish church has suspended all in-person services.

We have to prolong our season of separation based on contingencies that honor no calendar, liturgical or otherwise. The best we can anticipate and prepare for is more of the same that we have lived for the past eight months. That hardly speaks of renewal as we have known it, as we have depended on expecting it.

Finding renewal has become a difficult job. We’re in a gray area. That we need to find or create renewal apart from our communities is unsettling and disappointing.