Why we celebrate 7 weeks of Advent.
You might be wondering how that could be…doesn’t Advent start after Thanksgiving? But would you believe that it wasn’t like that in ages past? Advent was initially seven weeks, and there are signs of it in our assigned readings that begin just after All Saints Sunday. To quote The Advent Project (a group of liturgical scholars working to restore Advent to its original length), “The proposal for an expanded Advent is rooted in a very simple idea: to make the Advent we celebrate congruent with the lectionary we already have. Everything else is commentary…In its origin, the season of Advent was nearly seven weeks. The Gregorian Sacramentary introduced a four-week Advent in Rome in the seventh century, but this truncated version of the season was not widely adopted in other western churches until the twelfth or thirteenth century. The Orthodox still observe a longer Advent, though in the eastern tradition Advent has not been viewed as the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year. By the time of the 16th-century western reformations, however, though few remembered that Advent had once been longer, the season was clearly fixed as the initiation of a new liturgical year and, in the face of no competition from the Christmas culture until the 20th century, its focus was clearly eschatological.”
Another way to look at it is that it allows us to enter into a sacred mindfulness before the Thanksgiving to Christmas rush makes that difficult. We are not bound to the calendars of society, but the rhythm of the Holy Spirit.
Before the world turns up the Christmas music, the Church begins a different kind of countdown — not to presents, but to presence. Advent is more than a pause before Christmas. It’s a sacred season of waiting, of longing for God’s reign to break through our world once again. Starting Advent earlier helps us slow down, breathe, and remember what this season truly calls us to: hope, justice, and holy anticipation.
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