Advent: Moving beyond opening doors

Submitted by Isabelle Jenkins on December 15, 2010

For me, Advent has always been the wreath with the purple and pink candles and the calendars full of chocolate and covered in sparkles. Despite the fact I attended Catholic high school and a Jesuit college, Advent was never really explained to me, or, perhaps, I never really listened.

For the first time this year however, I had to listen. At my site, Church of the Good Shepherd in Watertown, my supervisor and the priest-in-charge, Amy McCreath, asked me if I would be willing to lead a justice themed bible study for Advent for some of the parishioners. My initial inclination was to say no because not only did I have no idea what Advent really was, but I also had no idea what justice had to do with Advent. How am I practicing social justice by opening a numbered door and eating the small, essentially tasteless chocolate inside?

After posing this question to Amy (using different words, of course), this mindset changed completely. Advent is Amy’s favorite season and, for her, it is perhaps the ultimate example of God’s desire for social justice. God chose Mary to bring into the world Jesus, the social transformer who turned over the tables in the temple, broke bread with the sick, the poor, and the needy, and was crucified for his resistance. In other words, God chose an unwed, common woman to give birth to God on earth. This is why Advent is the ultimate season for justice to Amy—what could model social transformation more than the time that glorifies the woman on the margins who brought God into being through the person of Jesus, the man who wanted to bring those on the outside to the center?

This conversation made something click in my mind. As a huge fan of liberation theology, I have always envisioned Jesus as a person who wanted to mobilize people to change the socially divided and marginalized world. Thus, Amy’s view of advent completely stuck with me. Advent is the time when we wait and hope for this vision of justice to arrive again. So even though I’m still opening those little doors and eating that chocolate, the counting down of the days is starting to mean something else to me. With each door I open, a little light shines through, beaming God’s vision for justice back into this world.