Advent: A New Hope

The beginning of Advent is the beginning of the Church year. And like other New Years, it is a time to both look at the past and the future. The story of Christianity, depending on how one frames it, is one of looking to the past or looking to the future. Through grace, sins of the past are washed away, and we are given new life and promised new earth. We await Christ’s victorious return, the second coming, the restoration of creation to God. But return, second coming, restoration…all of those imply that what we anticipate once was already. We are not moving forward so much as arriving back home.

In the nineteenth century, some Protestant groups began identifying as restorationists, believing that they were returning Christianity to the beliefs and practices of the earliest churches. But surely one could see the futility in such a proclamation. 1,700 years had passed. Empires had risen and fallen. What these nineteenth-century Americans thought they knew about first-century Jews and Greeks was obscured by language, cultural differences, missing information, and most of all, time. To say one could return to first-century Christianity is to ignore the vast influences of the world for the past few millennia.

Even when we say that we follow traditions, handed down through the centuries, we are not living in a temporal vacuum. Greek gave way to Latin which gave way to the vernacular. Traditions, while still honored and passed on, acknowledged the changing of people and culture. In post-colonial studies, one of the first tasks of a post-colonial state is to figure out its cultural identity. Is the culture what existed 400 years ago before the empire arrived? Or must the empire’s influence now be incorporated? Is that a betrayal to the ‘authentic’ culture? Returning to a pre-colonial time is not realistic; the empire left its mark, and even if it didn’t, no culture stands stagnate for hundreds of years. Change is always happening, and there is no one 'authentic' culture. A return to some perfect past is an illusion.

There is no going back.

Judaism is marked by Babylonian captivity. Christianity is marked by Roman persecution. Humanity is marked by our own sin. We can never return to a pre-Fall state. A reconciliation does not erase the history we have experienced. A return to God is not going into the past; it is going into the future. It is arriving home with the battle scars and being healed. The first week of Advent is about hope. We acknowledge our bondage and anticipate our liberation. And when that day comes, when that Savior arrives, we will take on our new identity.

St. Peter of Verona

St. Peter of Verona was born in 1205 to Cathars. Cathars believed that there were two gods, the good New Testament God of the spiritual world, and the bad Old Testament God of the material world. Everything of the material world came from Satan and was evil, including sacraments. However, Peter was educated in Catholic schools and at the University of Bologna. He became a Dominican friar and preacher. In 1251, he was appointed as inquisitor of Lombardy, where many Cathars lived. He converted many Cathars but also made several enemies. 

On April 6, 1252, he and another friar named Dominic were travelling to Milan when they were attacked by hired assassins. Peter was struck in the head with an ax. He died in the road after writing the opening line of the Apostles’ Creed in his own blood (Credo in unum Deum). Dominic died five days later. Peter was canonized the next year; this was the fastest papal canonization in history. Peter came to be known as St. Peter Martyr. One of his assassins repented and became a lay Dominican.

St. Peter of Verona’s feast day is April 6. (From 1586 to 1969, his feast day was April 29 because his death date would often conflict with Easter.) I find his icons one of the goriest, as he is often depicted with the ax still cutting into his head.

And Crown Him Lord of All

Today is the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. When I saw that on my calendar, I thought, what a cool title. King of the Universe. It sounds at first expansive, all-encompassingly powerful. However, it is not all-encompassing. It’s one title of many. The universe is only one of Christ’s realms. That’s what makes the title even cooler; King of the Universe is such a grand title, but even it falls short. 

However, the day is normally shortened to Christ the King Sunday. While it sounds less impressive, the more I thought about it, the more I found just Christ the King to be a better description. The title king is not attached to a specific place or people, instead it is a description. Christ is prophet, priest, and king. He’s king of the Jews, of the universe, of creation, of heaven and earth. 

The royal title and his humble life is intentional. The Jews were waiting for a very traditional king: royal birth, wealth, power, respect. He was supposed to take control of the land and lead armies. But Jesus didn’t do that. He was born into an unimpressive family. He had no home or belongings. He had no political power. He led no battles. He died a poor criminal’s death. He overturned our preconceptions of what king means. But that’s because our preconceptions are limited, earthly ideas. As always, there is so much more.