SEASON OF ADVENT
ADVENT
The season of preparation for Christmas, was kept to some extent like Lent, the preparation for Easter, and assumed a penitential character. The spirit of penance still finds expression in some of our passages used in the proper Masses of this season and in certain practices - the Violet vestments, the supression of the Gloria. But the Alleluia chant after the Gradual, which has always been maintained, is a clear indication that Advent is intended to be a time of gladness, as well as a time of anticipation. This gladness at the coming of salvation increases as Christmas approaches. On the third Sunday, the Altar with it's flowers, the Rose-colored Vestments worn, and the playing of the organ, all give emphasis to this increasing joy.
The principal purpose of the Christmas Cycle is to remind us of the radical transformation effected in our human life by the Incarnation of the Word.
(... and the Word was God. John 1.)
By coming into this world to take upon Himself our human nature, God's own Son did not merely become one of us, He gave us the power of becoming ourselves real children of God, a new race, a holy people, whom He quickens with His Divine Life and leads to our Heavenly home. The Incarnation inaugurated a new order, whose development continues here below and whose final consequence is our definitive union with God in eternity.
This profound transformation of our lives and destinies the Church celebrates at Christmas. She causes us to discover in our Savior's sacred humanity the ever- welling spring of our supernatural life and calls down on us, as on all men, the full accomplishment of the work of redemption which began by His coming into this world.
