LESSONS FROM LITURGY: Sanctifying Time and Advent Vigils

By Father Thomas Pressley

Advent and Christmas are coming quickly. On Dec. 1, the First Sunday of Advent, Bishop James Golka will be leading the Office of Vigils at St. Mary’s Cathedral at 5 p.m. I am hoping to convince you to come join us for this beautiful prayer.

God, the only eternal being, lives outside of time.  Boethius defines this eternity of God as “the whole simultaneous, perfect possession of limitless life . . . to embrace the whole of time in one simultaneous present.” Eternity is sanctified and holy because God is holy (Lev 11:44). 

But we are not eternal; we are constrained by time.  We experience life in a series of single moments in the present. Our memory and growth recall these moments as our past and our imagination and experience look toward a future, but we live our life in the present moment.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, said, “all time is God’s time. When the eternal Word assumed human existence at his Incarnation, he also assumed temporality.” Jesus has sanctified time by taking time into heaven.  Following the Lord’s command to “be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pt 1:16), Christians are called to sanctify every lived moment so our past, future, and present become holy for God.

 The liturgy of the Church accomplishes this sanctification of time. In the liturgy, Ratzinger explains, the “everlasting . . . enters into our present moment” and “wants to take hold of the worshipper’s life.”

Let’s look at three examples of time sanctified by liturgy: the year, the week, and the day.

Each year consists of six liturgical seasons. The Advent season begins the New Year for every Catholic with the joyful anticipation of Jesus coming at Christmas.  Christmas (not just one day!) celebrates the birth of our savior, God made man, and his manifestation to the world. Lent journeys with Christ during his fasting and temptation in the wilderness.  The Easter Triduum, the holiest days of the year, celebrates the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Easter recalls Christ’s victory over death in the resurrection and his sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Ordinary Time looks to the public life of Jesus as a lesson for the faithful and concludes the liturgical year with the Solemnity of Jesus Christ the King of the Universe.

The liturgical year allows us to anticipate and celebrate Jesus’ birth, suffer with him through his trials, exult in his victory over the grave, experience the Spirit acting in our lives, and look forward to his second coming at the end of history.

Additionally, throughout the year we celebrate the feasts of the saints as a witness to God’s power in a soul conformed to him; we too can be saints when we cooperate with the Spirit.

Each week, the Church’s Sunday Mass constitutes a three-fold reminder of God’s magnificent works. As the First Day of the week, our Sunday liturgy praises God’s work of creation when he said, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3). Second, the Church Fathers call Sunday the Eighth Day, the day of the new creation in Christ and new Sabbath.  The early Church transferred the Sabbath rest to Sunday as the new sign of the covenant and the eternal rest experienced by the Blessed in heaven.  Finally, it is the Third Day from the death of Christ. The Old Testament expresses the third day as a day of theophany when God came down on Mount Sinai to give the Law (Ex 19:16); the new Third Day shows God’s greatest theophany in Jesus’ resurrection and sending the Spirit to inscribe the Law in our hearts.

Every day is sanctified by the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, which according to the Church’s General Instruction, “consecrates to God the whole cycle of day and night.”

The Liturgy of the Hours, prayed by every priest throughout the world, consists of five prayers throughout the day: early morning, morning, daytime, evening, and night.  The Old Testament prefigures this prayer of the Church in the Psalms and the morning and evening offering in the Temple.  The New Testament shows the apostles continuing the Jewish hours of prayer to sanctify the day at the third, sixth, and ninth hour (Acts 2:15; 10:9; 3:1), and even at midnight (Acts 16:25).  This Liturgy of the Hours prepares the faithful for the worthy celebration of the Eucharist and carries the grace from the Eucharist to the rest of the day.

On Dec. 1, St. Mary’s Cathedral will be celebrating the Advent Vigils. The word “vigil” comes from the Latin word for “keeping watch” throughout the night in prayer. Our Lord Jesus rose early and stayed up late to pray through the night (Mk 1:35; Lk 6:12).  He reminds us to “Keep watch . . . for you do not know when the master of the house is coming” (Mk 13:35) and to “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Mk 14:38). 

Our Church tells us that the “Liturgy of the Hours . . . is not something private but belongs to the whole body of the Church,” and the beauty and meaning is “most clearly seen when . . . celebrated by a local Church in the presence of its bishop in the company of his priests.” Our Advent Vigil will help keep our hearts directed to the coming of Christ with songs and Psalms, passages from Isaiah and St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and words from the Gospel of Luke and Bishop Golka. In this liturgy, Christians pray with Christ to God the Father, as the Bride to Christ the Bridegroom, and as Christians on behalf of Christians and those who cannot pray. 

Come celebrate with us Dec. 1. Come celebrate the New Year, anticipating the coming of Jesus Christ to save us.  Come celebrate Sunday, the day of resurrection and new creation.  Come celebrate this Advent Vigil, watching and praying for the arrival of Jesus.  “Keep watch . . . for you do not know when the master of the house is coming.”