Advent is the first season of the Christian year, which begins on the Sunday nearest to the Feast of St. Andrew’s Day on November 30. It is a penitential season in preparation for Christmas.
God imparts many blessings to mankind. Life itself is His gift. During the Advent season, He gives to expectant souls some special blessings as they prepare to celebrate Christmas and the birth of His son Jesus Christ.
Among His special blessings during the season of Advent are the following.
The first blessing God imparts during the Advent season is hope. Hope is a divine blessing by which one trusts God completely. It is a trustful expectation and anticipation of a favorable outcome under God’s guidance. More specifically, hope is the confidence that what God has done for us in the past guarantees our participation in what He will do in the future.
Christian hope is a gift of Jesus Christ: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb. 6:19). The hope of ancient Israel centered on the coming of the Messiah who would bring redemption and peace to His people. The spirit of longing expectancy was not confined entirely to the people of Israel, for the Wise Men of the East, who were Gentiles, likewise cherished the hope of the dawning of a brighter day. The birth of Jesus Christ marked the fulfillment of these age-long hopes, for He was the Messiah, the divinely anointed Christ the King. “The hopes and fears of all years” are met in the birth of Jesus the savior.
The second blessing God imparts during the Advent season is peace. One of the deepest desires of all people is to live in peace. People want personal peace, peace for their hearts, peace for their families and peace for the world. The peace He gives is not like the “peace the world gives” (John 14:17). But how do we get it?
Even before the incarnation of Jesus, the voice of Hebrews’ prophecy proclaimed that He was to be the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). The angel choir praised God saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in whom He is pleased” (Luke 2:14).
Peace is a precious gift from God. He challenges His followers not only to have peace, but also to be peacekeepers. In this world, one of the greatest things is to experience the peace of Christ that “passes all understanding.”
The third blessing God imparts during the Advent season is joy. There is a deep undertone of joy in the Advent season. It conveyed the “good tidings of great joy” to the shepherds of Bethlehem from the herald angel. It brought joy and rejoicing for those kindly visitors from afar, “and when they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” (Matt. 2:10).
The joy that God gives us is not synonymous with what people ordinarily and superficially call happiness. Joy for believers does not depend on external happenings. The joy that God gives is not blind optimism, which tries to overlook the realities of life. Nor is it a denial of the reality of pain and sorrow. It is an inner quality that enables a person to transform stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
The fourth blessing that God imparts during the Advent season is love. Advent is a prelude to Christmas that stands for God’s gift of love to mankind. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God’s love is the costliest thing in the entire world. Out of His love, God came to us in Jesus Christ. He became Emmanuel (God with us).
Nowhere in any other religion is there an equivalent assertion of divinity entering human time and space. Nowhere in any faith is there an assertion that the transcendent, omnipotent deity became human. Here is the heart of the Christmas faith — that God became incarnate to set humanity free from the bondage of sin.
Christmas is a reminder to us that Jesus Christ is our greatest gift. When we were sinners, alienated from God, He came to reconcile us with God. Out of His immeasurable and boundless love, He came to this world to be our savior. In the words of Apostle Paul, “He who was rich for our sake became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich” (II Cor. 8:9). He came that we might have life and have it abundantly.
How do we reciprocate God’s love for us? We can reciprocate the divine love by giving our love and our life to Him.
Rev. Dr. Vahan Tootikian
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