Awaiting the Second Advent
By Matthew Kuchem, Public Discourse.
Christmas hope is grounded both in the reality of Christ’s first advent and also in the reality that he will come again to fully establish the peace his princely rule has promised. This is one of the great paradoxes of the faith: Christ has come, and he is coming. The kingdom has arrived, yet we pray “Thy kingdom come.”
Advent, meaning “arrival” or “appearance,” is a liturgical season of expectation and preparation for the coming of the promised Messiah.
This year, Advent seems particularly weighty. We have recently witnessed a brutal start to a new war between Israel and Hamas and the twenty-first century’s biggest surge of antisemitism, coming on the heels of other wars and rumors of wars as well as intensifying civil strife and moral decay at home.
These recent events are just the latest iterations of millennia-old evils that continue to torment a dark and broken world. They are reminders that the first advent is but a partial fulfillment of the peace for which we yearn and that our souls long for our heavenly home. Christians would benefit from retrieving a historic vision of the Advent season—a theologically rich tradition that is rooted in both church history and Scripture and that looks beyond the Incarnation to Christ’s Second Coming.
God Is Not Dead, Nor Does He Sleep
Advent is derived from the Latin noun adventus, which is often translated as “arrival” or “invasion.” The term also refers to the formal ceremony that celebrated a great king’s triumphal entry into the city to take up his royal residence. Adventus marked the beginning of his new reign and the inauguration of a new era of security, peace, and blessing for the city. The Roman emperors and later the popes participated in this inaugural ritual.
In fourth- and fifth-century Gaul and Spain, the liturgical period later known as Advent was a forty-day season of fasting and prayer for new converts who would be baptized on Epiphany, a church holy day marking the visitation of the Magi (in the Western church) and Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist (in the Eastern Church). Roman Christians in the sixth century began to observe Advent as a time of preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. Only later in the Middle Ages was Advent associated with Christ’s Nativity.
Modern Catholic and Protestant liturgies fuse the first and second appearances of Christ in the season of Advent. Some in the evangelical traditions conflate Advent with Christmas, while others do not celebrate Advent at all. For many who do observe Advent, it remains primarily a season for reenacting Israel’s long wait for the promised Messiah and for looking with hope to the joy of celebrating the Incarnation.
But an Advent season that focuses solely on Christ’s birth is in tension with our present situation. The Messiah did come. But he has ascended to heaven, and the created order remains twisted and broken. The Son of God has saved his people from the guilt and power of sin but not yet the curse of sin. He has redeemed the world but has yet to remake it.
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