The Origins Of Advent Worship

The history of Advent teaches us a great deal about its meaning and prepares us to observe this time with reverence and understanding. This history reveals the simultaneous importance of both penitence and hope, of both remorse and rejoicing. Preliminary Considerations To be serious about the Christian faith is to be serious about its history. To be sensitive to the history of God's people is to be responsive to the movement of time. The God "in whom we live, and move, and have our being" is made known to us and interacts with us in history. In certain dynamic moments, God invades our time and our history, and affords us a divine-human encounter, a glimpse, a momentary revelation. The ultimate act of God's invasion into history is Jesus Christ-incarnate, crucified, dead, risen, ascended, and coming again. It is commonplace to suggest that the essence of existence is the ability to remember; we are because we remember. As people of God, we are who we are-indeed, we recognize whose …