Today is both the first Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday of the new liturgical year (Year C in the lectionary for those who are following along. Advent is my favorite liturgical season, partially because it was the first new liturgical season I encountered after encountering the Episcopal church for the first time in my middle twenties in a high desert long ago and far away . . . let me take you there with a few introductory paragraphs from my new book which will be out just in time for the next new liturgical year in 2025.
One sunny morning in September 1983, when I was struggling in my late twenties with serious financial problems, a failing marriage, years of graduate school ahead of me, and a general malaise both spiritual and physical, I wandered into a Sunday morning service at Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Laramie, Wyoming. In a rush of emotional response to the beautiful organ, the stately procession of choir, crucifer, deacon, and priest from back to front, and the overwhelming expressions of welcome from dozens of strangers, I felt that I had stumbled into a home whose existence I had not been aware of but for which I had been longing my whole life.
Over the succeeding weeks and months Saint Matthew’s became a life preserver in more ways than one; I jumped into the strange and wonderful world of all things Episcopalian and the liturgical calendar with the enthusiasm of a true convert. My commitment deepened as I experienced Advent for the first time, as Christmas liturgies framed the holidays, and as Epiphany revealed Jesus’s coming out party and early ministry in new ways. Saint Matthew’s became a haven and refuge; before long, I was a daily regular at morning prayer services in the side chapel. Other than on Wednesdays, when the dean showed up so we could celebrate eucharist, the responsibility for the daily services rotated through the dozen or so regular attendees.
The First Sunday of Advent, almost always the Sunday following Thanksgiving, is the first day of the new liturgical year. I was raised in a version of Christianity that had no sense of the liturgical year. The landmarks of my Baptist youth were Christmas, Easter, and everything else. I knew nothing of Advent until my twenties, and loved its energy, its carols, its texts. Inwardness, reflection, anticipation, and patience—Advent is for introverts.
Although I have now spent well over half of my life as an Episcopalian, I still find this liturgical and lectionary stuff just as fascinating and compelling today as I did when I first wandered into Saint Matthew’s Cathedral in Laramie, Wyoming, more than four decades ago. I love Advent’s call to centeredness, to watchfulness, to expectation, its hymns, and its purple.
The great but incredibly difficult German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in a rare moment of clarity, wrote that all important human questions can be boiled down to these three: What can I know? What ought I to do? and What may I hope for? Advent focuses on the last of these questions. Enjoy the ride!
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