If asked by an unbeliever what Advent is all about, some Christians might innocently respond, “It’s when we prepare for Christmas.” While such an answer is correct, it’s also woefully incomplete. There is a lot more to Advent than mere preparation for Christmas.
It’s important that we don’t shortchange ourselves as believers. We need to claim all the lessons and graces of Advent. With this in mind, if someone were to ask us the question about Advent, we could begin by responding, “Well, there are actually three advents in the one Advent season.”
Such an answer reveals the depth of the season itself. But what exactly do we mean when we say there are three advents in the one Advent season?
Since the word “advent” is Latin for “coming” or “arrival,” is has several different applications. If we want to receive all the graces of Advent, then we need to understand the three advents, or three “comings” or “arrivals,” of the Lord Jesus.
We can begin to understand the three advents by referencing what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about Advent. The Catechism only speaks explicitly of the Advent season twice. These two selections read in part:
“When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming” (524).
“For this reason the Church, especially during Advent and Lent and above all at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the ‘today’ of her liturgy. But this also demands that catechesis help the faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church’s liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it” (1095).
In these selections, we can see how the focus of the Church is not only on a remembrance of the historical First Coming of the Lord Jesus, but also his Second Coming at the end of time. As seen in the Catechism, the Church actually makes a direct comparison between the anticipation of the Lord’s First Coming as a means of hope as we await his Second Coming. And so, Advent includes these two advents.
The Catechism also speaks of the sacred liturgy and the reliving of the great events of salvation history through it. While this is true in many ways, it is preeminently experienced in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, where the one historical sacrifice of the Lord Jesus is made present to us today. This liturgical “making present” of the saving mystery of the Lord is also an advent, a coming and arrival, of the Lord Jesus. And so, we have a third advent.
The spiritual tradition highlights these three advents. They are particularly summarized in a famous homily by a doctor of the Church, St. Bernard of Clairvaux. As a means of stressing the homily’s importance, the Church places it within the Office of Readings on the Wednesday of the First Week of Advent.
In the cherished homily, St. Bernard — who is hailed as the “Honey-Sweet Doctor” because of the sweetness of his mystical writings — describes the three advents, the three comings of the Lord Jesus, in a rich biblical context. He sees the three advents as a part of God’s plan for humanity.
He describes the First Coming:
“At his first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men, who saw him and hated him.”
Bernard then teaches about the sacramental coming of the Lord, the intermediate way as we await the Second Coming of the Lord:
“This middle coming is like a road that leads from the first coming to the last. At the first, Christ was our redemption; at the last, he will become manifest as our life; but in this middle way he is our rest and our consolation.”
The saint develops his teaching on the middle advent and asserts:
“In the middle, the hidden coming, only the chosen see him, and they see him within themselves; and so their souls are saved.”
As a point of emphasis, St. Bernard stresses his teachings on the middle coming and exhorts any naysayers:
“If you think that I am inventing what I am saying about the middle coming, listen to the Lord himself: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and the Father will love him, and we shall come to him’” [John 14:23].
And, finally, the esteemed doctor of the Church explains the Second Coming:
“At his last coming All flesh shall see the salvation of our God, and They shall look on him whom they have pierced.”
St. Bernard concludes the homily by summarizing the three comings of the Lord:
“The first coming was in flesh and weakness, the middle coming is in spirit and power, and the final coming will be in glory and majesty.”
As we can see in his Advent homily, St. Bernard was divinely skilled in teaching about the spiritual life, so much so that Venerable Pius XII devotionally called him “the last Church Father.”
Drawing from the spiritual wisdom of the great St. Bernard, we can now observe the Advent season with a broader horizon and see it as the beautiful blending of three powerful comings of the Lord.
In the Advent season, the Church creatively inverses the order of the three comings and places the Second Coming first.
In the initial portion of the Advent season, therefore, our focus is on the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus. The biblical readings and prayers of the sacred liturgy emphasize the End Times and our preparation for the Lord’s glorious return.
Throughout the Advent season, we are called to be aware of the Lord’s coming to us in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and in the worthy reception of Holy Communion.
As Advent shifts with the celebration of Gaudete (“Rejoice”) Sunday, our focus is then directed to the remembrance of the Lord’s historical First Coming in Bethlehem.
While there are many Christians who minimize the Advent season to being a casual and sometimes solely materialistic preparation for Christmas, there is a lot more to the sacred season.
There is more that the Lord Jesus desires to teach us and more grace he desires to us give us in Advent. We need to be watchful, therefore, and ready for the Lord’s coming.
The weeks leading up to Dec. 25 are not merely about buying presents, putting up Christmas decorations or attending parties. On a higher level, it’s also not just about spiritually preparing for Christmas — it’s about celebrating and spiritually experiencing the three advents of the Lord. It is about being prepared for the coming of the Lord in all its forms. As such, we need to rejoice over the Lord’s First Coming to us as Savior in the manger of Bethlehem, welcome his coming to us in the sacraments throughout our lives, and then be ready for his Second Coming to us as Judge of the living and the dead.