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The Christmas Cycle
Monday
“Knowing that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than
when we believed. The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works
of darkness, and put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting
and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy; but put ye
on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Epistle).
“The day is at hand.” It is the day on which Christ is to return, the day on which He
is to reappear with power and glory to judge the living and the dead (2 Tm 4:1). The
first week of Advent fixes firmly in our minds the thought of the Last Judgment. Let
us make a good use of the time that is given to us. “It is now the hour for us to rise
from sleep. . . . Our salvation is nearer than when we believed,” that is, when we were
but recently baptized. The Day of Judgment is at hand, for each moment slipping by
brings the Judge nearer. As the days and the years and the centuries glide silently by,
we approach ever nearer to the moment that will see the resurrection of the body from
the dead, and the beginning of eternal life and everlasting glory. With each return of
the season of Advent the words of the Apostle are verified, “our salvation is nearer than
when we believed.” Our life is marching inevitably toward its end. The hours and the
days that we have squandered in sleep will not return. The time that we have failed to
use profitably during our lifetime must remain eternally unprofitable. It is indeed time
for us to arise from sleep.
“Leave off your dreaming,
Put sleep to flight,
For Christ appears
From out the night.”
— Advent hymn
It was not only the foolish virgins who slept when the bridegroom was long in coming (Mt
25:5). Even zealous souls may become drowsy, sleepy, negligent, and halfhearted, fulfilling
their duties mechanically and imperfectly. For this reason the Church admonishes us at the
beginning of Advent, “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep.”
“The day is at hand.” In the Epistle this phrase may be understood in another sense
also. Our present life as Christians differs from our former life as pagans as the day differs
from the night. When the liturgy speaks of the day’s being at hand, it means that now as
Christians our lives begin to be illuminated by the rays of the rising Sun, which is Christ.
Or is it not rather the beginning of our glorified life that is promised us when the fullness
of time has come? On the far horizon of our Christian life the day of our resurrection
is already dawning. The pagan Gentiles are still living in the darkness of spiritual night.
We Christians live in the full, clear light of day. It behooves us, therefore, to make a profitable
use of the time given to us; “Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness,” the
works of paganism, the works of an unchristian life, and put on the armor of light. The
works of darkness are rioting and drunkenness, inordinate love of pleasure, chambering
and impurities, sensuality and all other forms of immorality. Contention and envy are
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