The spirit of Advent
By Fr Thomas Crean OP | 3 December 2025
Chesterton once proposed that all great works of literature manage to evoke the whole of human life, but under some one of its aspects: “The ‘Iliad’ is only great because all life is a battle, the ‘Odyssey’ because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.”1 Something similar may be said of the liturgical seasons of the Church. Each of them distils, during a part of the year, one element of our permanent spiritual outlook. Thus, although the Christian must be always ready to “suffer with Christ”, Passion-tide brings this thought to the fore. The joy of being risen with Him should never be distant from our soul, but it is in Eastertide that this gladness imbues us, through the liturgy of the Church. And although we are to be continuously on the look out for Christ’s return, it is Advent that trains us in this expectation.
From the very start of their journey, Christians are taught to be ready for its end. When the neophyte emerges from the font, the priest gives to him a burning candle, and says: “Obey God’s commandments, so that when our Lord comes for the joyous wedding feast you may go forth to meet Him with all the saints”. The allusion, of course, is to the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Cornelius a Lapide noted in his Rules for Interpreting Scripture that whatever is said in the gospels about the return of Christ can be applied both to His final coming and to the death of each believer. As St Augustine explains:
“He said Stay awake not only to those who then heard Him speak, but also to those who came after those times, and to us, and to all who shall be after us, until His final coming: for it pertains to us all, in one way or another. For that day will come to each of us, when each one’s day comes to go hence, to be judged just as he is on that day. Therefore ought every Christian to watch, that the Lord’s coming may not find him unprepared; for that day will find him unprepared, whom the last day of his own life finds unprepared.”2
Our Lord liked to tell parables about His return; He did not want us to forget that He is coming back. Yet we sometimes overlook the differences between or within them. In the twelfth chapter of St Luke, for example, we hear about servants who must be alert to the possibility of not one but two nocturnal arrivals. First we read, “Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh, shall find watching. … And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants” — but a verse later: “This know ye, that if the householder did know at what hour the thief would come, he would surely watch, and would not suffer his house to be broken open.” Which is it, then, we are to expect: the Master or a thief?
If we speak of the Church as a whole, the answer can be, both. Since the thief tries by deceit to appropriate what belongs to the Master, he can be understood as antichrist, of whom St John says, “You have heard that he is coming”(1 Jn 4:3). St Paul likewise taught that “the man of sin”must appear before the coming of the Lord (2 Thess 2:8).
But if we understand the parable as referring to the individual believer, then there is a choice. If the believer “sleeps”, that is, if he forgets what he has been taught and fixes his heart in this world, death will be to him as a thief, since it will deprive him of what he holds most dear. If on the other hand, he “watches” by remembering what he has learned, then he need not fear least that a thief may come. For him, rather, it will be the Master who arrives. They are even pronounced twice blessed for whom He comes in either “the second watch or the third”. Perhaps this signifies those believers who are no longer beginners, but either “proficient” or even “perfect”.3
That parable was told while Christ was still travelling to Jerusalem. In the last week of His earthly life, He spoke a similar one, recorded in the thirteenth chapter of St Mark. Here, more poignantly, it is not a “marriage feast” but “a far country” to which the Master must go; accordingly, during the long absence there will be a division of labour among the household staff. The “servants” as a body are placed “over every work”, but one of them, “the porter”, is “commanded to watch”. In the Church, some people are busy above all with external works, while some must labour especially in contemplation. We need people, in monasteries and outside them, who will make their principal occupation to be prayer. These are the Church’s porters or portresses, who look more than the others for the coming of the Lord.
In this parable, the time of this return is still more uncertain than before. It may not take place at night at all. Four possibilities are set before the four apostles who hear Him speak: Peter, James, John, and Andrew (Mk 13:3). “You know not when the lord of the house cometh: at evening, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning.” Was He here, I wonder, assigning one of these four times to each of His four friends? We know, after all, that James was the first to die, and John the last. But even more, these four hours suggest the varying fortunes of the Church. For although we read of things that must come to pass before Christ’s return: the preaching of the gospel to all nations (Mt 24:14), the falling-away (2 Thess 2:3), and the salvation of all Israel (Rom 11:26), we do not know what the condition of the Church will be on that last day. Will she be weary, as men often are “at evening”? Even apparently inert, as if at her “midnight”? Or will her bishops then be announcing the gospel with great boldness, as St Gregory says is symbolised by “the cockcrowing”? Might she even be enjoying a new flowering, as if again “in the morning” of her life? Neither public nor private revelation allow us to feel sure.
Naturally, we can apply these four times to ourselves as well. For some, Christ comes when they are only beginning, as if before dawn; for others, when they are in the full tide of life; for some, when the day’s work is done, and they were looking forward to a peaceful evening; for others again, when they have outlived their contemporaries, being finished with both chores and avocations, as if at midnight. It does not really matter: “The readiness is all.”
“And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch.”
Notes
- GK Chesterton, ‘A Defence of Nonsense’, in The Defendant (1901). ↩︎
- “Augustine says ‘as soon as charity is born it takes food’, which refers to beginners, ‘after taking food, it waxes strong’, which refers to those who are progressing, ‘and when it has become strong it is perfected’, which refers to the perfect. Therefore there are three degrees of charity” (St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a 2ae 24.9). ↩︎
- Cf. St Augustine, Letter to Hesychius. ↩︎