This morning’s Gospel reading is Mark 13:33–37:

Jesus said to his disciples:

“Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore; you do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”

Welcome to Advent, the Church’s liturgical season of preparation for the coming of Christ. It is, in fact, the ‘first’ liturgical season on the Church’s calendar, as we launch into a new liturgical year. Advent lasts for four weeks, and then we celebrate our Christmas season for two weeks. Between that and Lenten season, we have a brief period of Ordinary Time. Of course, Lent ends when Holy Week (Paschal Triduum)  begins, which leads us into Easter and Pentecost. After Pentecost, we then enter another season of Ordinary Time, this lasting roughly six months.

Thus, Advent reminds us of both renewal and preparation. Jesus offers a brief parable about the latter relating to the necessity of both preparation and watchfulness. But before we delve too deeply into that, we could ask ourselves this: why have ‘seasons’ at all? Should we not be in Advent the entire year, preparing for the Lord’s return?

Perhaps, and in some sense, that’s what we do. Despite its rather dull name, Ordinary Time isn’t a departure from worship or preparation. Rather, it is a time for us to prepare in a more comprehensive manner, when we move through the Gospels and scriptures with deliberation and dedication to form ourselves more fully to Christ. For half of our year, we stand watch in that ‘ordinary’ manner, worshipping and communing together and spreading the Good News as Jesus commanded.

So why have seasons and periods of special observances? For one thing, it helps keep us focused on our mission — and it helps us fulfill what Jesus commands in this parable today. Standing watch on a perpetual basis creates fatigue and a loss of will, as anyone who has tried it either in the military or in the Scouts can tell you. Human beings need change, diversion, and fresh perspectives.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis grasped the issue brilliantly. His demon Screwtape instructs his nephew about the demonic horror Hell has instilled about The Same Old Thing, but warns that God has already accounted for it in the structure of His worship:

The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.

Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer. Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.

Rhythm is the perfect word for the liturgical calendar. Its seasons offer us this rhythm, and within the constancy of God, to allow us to remain not just prepared but fresh for the battle. We have a cycle that changes within each year but remains fixed on the Lord’s unchanging nature, and on the unchanging nature of His revealed Word.

This rhythm allows us to remain refreshed for the lifelong vigil of keeping watch for Christ’s return. And it also keeps us focused on all of Christ’s Word rather than just the Second Coming, a necessity that Christ Himself foresees in today’s Gospel. Even the disciples wouldn’t know the day or the hour of His return, and that makes a constant vigil for only that a waste of time. Instead, Jesus will leave His disciples “each with his own work,” to be done while the gatekeeper — the Church — keeps watch for the Master’s return.

If everyone stood at the gate and did nothing but watch the road, none of the work would get accomplished. But even more importantly, the failed expectation of the Master’s imminent return day after day, month after month, and years upon years would demoralize and undermine the people of the church. The Apostles themselves must have grappled with this; the scriptures broadly hint that they expected to see Jesus return in their own lifetime, and only after lengthy reflection on the Great Commission began to understand that they too could not just sit at the gate and watch the road.

Advent and the other liturgical seasons are a gift to keep us refreshed with the rhythms of Church life, while focusing on the unchanging Word. That’s a good reason to celebrate the New Year in Christ, and to keep preparing for His return, and our return to the Lord.

The front-page image is “Jesus Christ and His Disciples” by Gérard de Lairesse, c. 1700. On display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.