Advent as a season of penitence

This is my favorite season of the Church year. The compline (prayer at the end of the day) liturgy says “guide us waking O, Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.” I can imagine no better words for this Advent season, as we watch and wait for Jesus’ light to illumine our lives fully. In Christian worship, in the study of scripture, in service to others in Christ’s name, in the difficult work of reconciliation, we are given hope this Advent season. Jesus tells us “the brokenness that you so often see is not all there is. There is hope and joy yet to come.”

At this time in the year, we find respite from the urgency of the world, its frantic lights and desperate slogans that chant "hurry up, please, it's time." In the words of Jesus, we find hope; Christ promises to bring our lives—broken and hurting as they are—to fulfillment.

Yet this promise is something we must wait for. We must lift our heads up and be alert. Our culture lives in active contradiction of this. With debit cards and automatic transactions, why wait on purchases we can't afford? With sexuality and reproduction divorced from one another, why honor the institution of marriage by waiting to sanctify passion with sacred vows of fidelity? If medical technologies posess the power to do so, why not alter embryos to avoid "undesirable" traits? Why wait?

Christians are called to watch and to wait. While the malls are filled with decoration and radio stations have been blaring tawdry Christmas music since October, we are called to the stillness of Advent. We watch and we wait. We clear out the mental, the spiritual, the physical garbage that gets in the way of Christ. We invoke the Spirit's guidance, asking that we be purified as in a refiner's fire.

It is in this spirit of penitence that I'm undertaking a few disciplines for Advent.
1) Matins (morning prayer) each morning, as early as I can reasonably get to the office.
2) Fifteen minutes of greek or hebrew review each day, and translation of one verse of scripture
in conjunction with that.
3) Tithing faithfully, which will probably have to mean eating out less and balancing our
checkbook more regularly.