A Change of Color

As a kid, I always looked forward to this Third Sunday of Advent.  The Mass vestments would change from the darker violet hues of the season to a cheerful, rosy pink,  the pink candle on the Advent wreath would be lit,   and I knew it was a sign that Christmas was getting closer. 

Was this a spiritual insight?   Perhaps a little bit -- most Catholic children knew that Advent would lead us into Christmas and the celebration of Jesus' birth.  Of course, that also meant that school would close for a while,  that we'd be decorating the tree,  that there would be gifts, festive meals,  and some leisurely fun activities.  Even those traditional pickled herring that we ate in our house every New Year's Eve counted as something to be anticipated with delight.    The rose-colored vestments were a sign that all of this was getting closer.  So  the spiritual meaning of the color change was accompanied by lots of seemingly less-spiritual anticipation.

It's easy, even now,  to look around us and piously shake our heads at the commercialization of Christmas,  at the decorative lights and increased mall traffic and the piles of cards and gifts,  at the increased pace of the season.  I struggle with it, too. 

Yet maybe all of this is a sign that, however secular and commercial our culture may be,  underneath it all is a simple longing for light,  for peace,  for connection with God and with others  -- and a need to celebrate the fact that in Jesus,  this longing is satisfied, even if we don't always feel it, even if we still see violence and tragedy in the headlines.

Years ago, I was stopped at a traffic light in a decidedly poor and probably crime-ridden area of a nearby town.  It was December,  and the neighborhood was cold, grey,  dismal.  I happened to look up at the window of a small apartment above a corner store at the intersection.  There was a single electric candle lit in that window.     Someone had cared enough to notice and celebrate the season in a small, humble,  nearly-unnoticeable way, by placing the candle in the window and plugging it in.   That lone candle, beaming its little light into that poor and frightened neighborhood,   suddenly seemed bigger than the lights of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree!  Was it an expression of someone's Christmas celebration,  or of someone's longing for meaning and connection?    It really doesn't matter.  It made a difference -- decades later, I'm writing about it, and  you're reading about it!

So, as we celebrate this Third Advent Sunday,  and move with the pace of this busy season,  let's not think "OK....just get me through Christmas and back to normal in January."   Jesus has come,  is risen,  and lives among us.   He's brought a "new normal" into being and that "new normal" brings an infinity of possibilities to celebrate, because with Jesus' coming, nothing will ever be the same, everything has changed,  and, no matter how difficult things may be,  God is here, with us,  forever faithful.













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