UVM News and Readings: December 2024
News & Events
Wanted in 2025: Input and Volunteers
At the biannual meeting of the UVM board in November, much of the discussion revolved around what steps we might take in the year ahead to continue to build our virtual TLM parish in Maine. Out of that discussion, initiatives emerged in which we hope the Maine TLM community will participate in the name of developing a clearer understanding of who we are and how we can develop greater ties of community given that we are, in essence, a parish spread across a significant landscape.
Chaplaincy Registration
First, Fr. Parent reports there are currently 165 families registered with the St. Gregory the Great Latin Mass Chaplaincy. Given that the Una Voce Maine email list is nearly double that, however, we are confident there are a number of TLM regulars who’ve not yet registered. With a goal of developing a better understanding of who is, and how many are, attending the TLM, we’d like to invite those who haven’t registered to take a moment to fill out the form at the link above. In addition to helping us develop a clearer understanding of our community for internal purposes, we’d also like a more accurate understanding of our numbers as we anticipate possibly meeting with Bishop Ruggieri in the next few months to introduce the Maine TLM community to him more thoroughly.
2025 Survey
For similar reasons, the board decided it was time once again to conduct a survey to gain greater insight into where our community comes from to attend the TLM, what you hope to see in the year ahead as it relates to both the TLM in Maine and the activities of UVM, and what suggestions you might have for us to consider. It’s been over five years since the last survey, and between the effects of Covid and growing attendance, we’re sure it’s time to catch up. Keep an eye out for that survey early next year!
Social Hour Committee
Finally, the board looked at how we might enhance our lineup of social hours after both Sunday and First Saturday masses. While, to date, the social hours have been well-attended and well-supplied, there have been requests for more regular gatherings, particularly at the Basilica. Consequently, the board decided to ask for volunteers from the TLM community to form a social hour committee that would more actively manage the logistics of the social hours to ensure there is enough food, coffee, condiments, etc. In addition, the board voted to commit a small budget to each of the Sunday social hours, and also to take steps to ensure the needs of the First Saturday Mass communities are being met.
The first step, however, is to ask for volunteers for the UVM Social Hour committee that will be asked to oversee the logistics of the social hours. If you are interested in helping support our TLM community, please email UVM at info@unavocemaine.org.
Finally, we are pleased to announce that the Basilica fundraising campaign for the communion rail has achieved its goal, and installation should be getting underway in the next few weeks.
The Liturgical Year
Very Rev. Dom Prosper Guéranger Abbot of Solesmes, 1833-1875
The History of Advent
The name Advent [from the Latin word Adventus, which signifies a coming] is applied, in the Latin Church, to that period of the year, during which the Church requires the faithful to prepare for the celebration of the feast of Christmas, the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. The mystery of that great day had every right to the honor of being prepared for by prayer and works of penance; and, in fact, it is impossible to state, with any certainty, when this season of preparation [which had long been observed before receiving its present name of Advent] was first instituted. It would seem, however, that its observance first began in the west, since it is evident that Advent could not have been looked on as a preparation for the feast of Christmas, until that feast was definitively fixed to the twenty-fifth of December; which was done in the east only towards the close of the fourth century; whereas it is certain that the Church of Rome kept the feast on that day at a much earlier period.
We must look upon Advent in two different lights: first, as a time of preparation, properly so called, for the birth of our Savior, by works of penance; and secondly, as a series of ecclesiastical Offices drawn up for the same purpose. We find, as far back as the fifth century, the custom of giving exhortations to the people in order to prepare them for the feast of Christmas. We have two sermons of Saint Maximus of Turin on this subject, not to speak of several others which were formerly attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, but which were probably written by St. Cesarius of ArIes. If these documents do not tell us what was the duration and what the exercises of this holy season, they at least show us how ancient was the practice of distinguishing the time of Advent by special sermons. Saint Ivo of Chartres, St. Bernard, and several other doctors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, have left us set sermons de Adventu Domini, quite distinct from their Sunday homilies on the Gospels of that season. In the capitularia of Charles the Bald, in 846, the bishops admonish that prince not to call them away from their Churches during Lent or Advent, under pretext of affairs of the State or the necessities of war, seeing that they have special duties to fulfill, and particularly that of preaching during those sacred times.
The oldest document in which we find the length and exercises of Advent mentioned with anything like clearness, is a passage in the second book of the History of the Franks by St. Gregory of Tours, where he says that St. Perpetuus, one of his predecessors, who held that see about the year 480, had decreed a fast three times a week, from the feast of St. Martin until Christmas. It would be impossible to decide whether St. Perpetuus, by his regulations, established a new custom, or merely enforced an already existing law. Let us, however, note this interval of forty, or rather of forty-three days, so expressly mentioned, and consecrated to penance, as though it were a second Lent, though less strict and severe than that which precedes Easter. . . The liturgical form of Advent as it now exists in the Roman Church, has gone through certain modifications. St. Gregory (d. 604 AD) seems to have been the first to draw up the Office for this season, which originally included five Sundays, as is evident from the most ancient sacramentaries of this great Pope. It even appears probable . . . that St. Gregory originated the ecclesiastical precept of Advent, although the custom of devoting a longer or shorter period to a preparation for Christmas has been observed from time immemorial, and the abstinence and fast of this holy season first began in France. St. Gregory therefore fixed, for the Churches of the Latin rite, the form of the Office for this Lent-like season, and sanctioned the fast which had been established, granting a certain latitude to the several Churches as to the manner of its observance.
The Mystery of Advent
If, now that we have described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that this mystery of the coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple, for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold, because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.
‘In the first coming,’ says St. Bernard, ‘He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.’ (Fifth sermon for Advent)
...The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardor the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins her own supplications. These longings for the Messiah expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they have a reality and efficacy of their own, an influence in the great act of God’s munificence, whereby He gave us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after receiving and granting them, that He sent, in the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon the earth, which made it bud forth the Savior.
The Church aspires also to the second coming, the consequence of the first, which consists, as we have just seen, in the visit of the Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes place, each year, at the feast of Christmas, when the new birth of the Son of God delivers the faithful from that yoke of bondage, under which the enemy would oppress them. (Collect for Christmas day) The Church, therefore, during Advent, prays that she may be visited by Him Who is her Head and her Spouse; visited in her hierarchy; visited in her members, of whom some are living, and some are dead, but may come to life again; visited, lastly, in those who are not in communion with her, and even in the very infidels, that so they may be converted to the true light, which shines even for them. The expressions of the liturgy which the Church makes use of to ask for this loving and invisible coming, are those which she employs when begging for the coming of Jesus in the flesh; for the two visits are for the same object. In vain would the Son of God have come . . . to visit and save mankind, unless He came again for each one of us and at every moment of our lives, bringing to us and cherishing within us that supernatural life, of which He and His Holy Spirit are the sole principle.
But this annual visit of the Spouse does not content the Church; she aspires after a third coming, which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. She has caught up the last words of her Spouse, ‘Surely I am coming quickly’; (Apocalypse 22:20) and she cries out to Him, ‘Ah! Lord Jesus! come!’ (Apocalypse 22:20) She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse. Her desires, expressed by her Advent liturgy, go even as far as this; and here we have the explanation of these words of the beloved disciple in his prophecy: ‘The nuptials of the Lamb are come, and His wife hath prepared herself.’ (Apocalypse 19:7)
The Practice of Advent
If our holy mother the Church spends the time of Advent in this solemn preparation for the threefold coming of Jesus Christ; if, after the example of the prudent virgins, she keeps her lamp lit ready for the coming of the Bridegroom; we, being her members and her children, ought to enter into her spirit, and apply to ourselves this warning of our Savior: ‘Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands, and ye yourselves be like unto men who wait for their Lord!’ (Luke 12:35-36) The Church and we have, in reality, the same hopes. Each one of us is, on the part of God, an object of mercy and care, as is the Church herself. If she is the temple of God, it is because she is built of living stones; if she is the bride, it is because she consists of all the souls which are invited to eternal union with God. If it is written that the Savior hath purchased the Church with His own Blood, (Acts 20:28) may not each one of us say of himself those words of St. Paul, ‘Christ hath loved me, and hath delivered Himself up for me’. (Galatians 2:20) Our destiny being the same, then, as that of the Church, we should endeavour during Advent, to enter into the spirit of preparation, which is, as we have seen, that of the Church herself.
History of Christmas
We apply the name of Christmas to the 40 days which begin with the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year; as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view the whole 40 days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which She received the glad tidings from the Angels (Luke 2:10) on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing 4000 years. The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of Our Savior’s Nativity by a Feast or commemoration of 40 days’ duration is founded on the Holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending 40 days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of Her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfill, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.
Mystery of Christmas
Everything is mystery in this holy Season. The Word of God, Whose generation is before the day star (Psalm 109:3), is born in time—a Child is God—a Virgin becomes a Mother, and remains a Virgin—things divine are commingled with those that are human—and the sublime, the ineffable antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple, in those words of his Gospel, The Word Was Made Flesh, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church—and rightly, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent which unites in one Person the nature of Man and the nature of God.
The splendor of this Mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. It is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints; nay, is the source and cause of their beatitude.
Practice during Christmas
The time has now come for the faithful soul to reap the fruit of the efforts she made during the penitential weeks of Advent to prepare a dwelling-place for the Son of God, who desires to be born within her. The Nuptials of the Lamb are come, and his Spouse hath prepared herself. (Apocalypse 19:7) Now the Spouse is the Church; the Spouse is also every faithful soul. Our Lord gives his whole self to the whole flock, and to each sheep of the flock with as much love as though he loved but that one. What garments shall we put on, to go and meet the Bridegroom? Where shall we find the pearls and jewels wherewith to deck our soul for this happy meeting? Our holy Mother the Church will tell us all this in her Liturgy. Our best plan for spending Christmas is, undoubtedly, to keep close to her, and do what she does; for she is most dear to God, and being our Mother, we ought to obey all her injunctions.
