Advent
Advent marks the commencement of the Church year and opens on Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day. Traditionally it is a time of fasting and is a 'penitential' season, hence the liturgical colour being purple.
The word is derived from a Latin root which means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’, and the season was developed in the Western church as a preparation for the festival of the nativity. Councils held in Gsul in the sixth century refer to a penitential period of six weeks before Christmas. There was fasting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But the season was already known to Gregory of Tours in the latter part of the preceding century. It may be affirmed that fifth century Gaul was the place of origin of the fully organized period of six Sundays, and that the structure of Advent, with regard to its length, was modelled on Lent. Various lectionaries dating from the seventh and eighth centuries, or representing the use of that time, show the six Sunday pattern in Gaul and north-west Italy. At a greater distance from Gaul, that is, in Spain, northeast Italy and south Italy, we find five Sundays, clearly representing a modification of the original structure. The Würzburg manuscript, containing in a table of epistles the oldest Roman lectionary, commences with Christmas and places a five-Sunday Advent at the end. So at Rome the logic of the invention of Advent had not been completely accepted. Eventually at Rome Advent was reduced from five to four Sundays. As the Roman rite gradually triumphed over the native uses of the West the four-Sunday Advent became the norm.
Advent has come to mark preparation for the coming of Christ in a double manner, first in his incarnation as the babe of Bethlehem, which is obvious, and in his second coming at the end of time, which is perhaps less so. Also involved is commemoration of the ministry of John the Baptist as Christ's forerunner and, for Anglicans and other followers of the tradition of the Book of Common Prayer, the place of scripture in worship and life, because of the prayer book collect for the second Sunday.
Modern observance of Advent tends to be overshadowed by the all but universal anticipation of Christmas, necessary in scholastic institutions, unfortunate if perhaps inevitable elsewhere. Likewise it can be questioned whether the Joint Liturgical Group Calendar, with its nine-Sunday approach to Christmas, can be combined with the traditional Western four-Sunday Advent, as the Alternative Service Book of the Church of England has done. Perhaps a penitential analogue to Lent for the period before Christmas is otiose anyway, a piece of unnecessary Gallican elaboration, and something like the Joint Liturgical Group approach should be adopted without further complication.
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