During the weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas, you'll find many essays and op-eds lamenting the rampant materialism that accompanies the season. By "materialism" the writers generally mean consumerism, the excessive focus on presents and gift-giving to the exclusion of Christ. Indeed it's easy to let this consumerism distract us from the twofold purpose of Advent set forth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior's first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for His second coming.
And yet there is another kind of materialism that often manifests itself during this season. It suggests that, rather than spend Advent preparing oneself for the coming of our Lord by repenting of past sins and engaging in traditional penitential acts like fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, we ought to use this time almost exclusively to make a commitment to a very materially-oriented brand of social justice.
Now, social justice is a crucial part of the Gospel, as anyone who has read Matthew 25 will attest, but we need to put our spiritual houses in order first. The Gospel is primarily about salvation — from sin. As the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us:
Jesus accompanied His words with signs and miracles to bear witness to the fact that the Kingdom is present in Him, the Messiah. Although He healed some people, He did not come to abolish all evils here below but rather to free us especially from the slavery of sin.
Yet often this ordering of things is confused. In an op-ed in a recent edition of my local diocesan paper, Father Ben Urmston, S.J., wrote, "The Eucharist is incomplete everywhere in the world as long as anyone is hungry anywhere in the world." Aside from the tinge of liturgical Pelagianism that runs through such a statement, nowhere in the entire piece does he issue a call for repentance or personal conversion from sin. It is in that sense spiritually bereft.
In the same edition, Sister Carol Gaeke, O.P., wrote a lengthy essay about the meaning of the symbols associated with the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." The song dates to England's Elizabethan era, and was a way for Catholics to use seemingly secular symbols to help catechize children in the faith during a time of great persecution.
You wouldn't know it from Sister Gaeke's essay. The cows in the "eight maids a'milking" are "symbols of our earth that needs to be tended and nurtured, not used up and destroyed by human greed." In her mind the symbols form a puzzle, along the borders of which are "global warfare, nuclear weapons, domestic violence, sexual, class, and racial violence." (No, I'm not making this up.) The number of calls to conversion in Sister's essay? Zero.
Likewise, in this month's Catholic Update pamphlet "Advent: Celebrating Promise, Joy, Hope," Father Ken Overberg, S.J., argues that John the Baptist's Advent message in Luke's Gospel is concerned with "profound social, economic and political challenges" like "corporate corruption" and "national policies of war and nuclear arms." And, as in the case of Father Urmstom and Sister Gaeke, there is not one call to personal conversion that includes repentance, a fact that would make the Baptist roll in his grave.
These musings stand in stunning contrast to the vision of our late Holy Father Pope John Paul the Great. In an Advent-themed address in 1994, he urged the faithful to point out "with fresh vigor to the men and women of today that Jesus Christ is the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world' (Jn 1:29)," and he requested that they work toward a conversion of heart by repenting of past sins.
Similarly, Pope Benedict XVI on December 4 of this year stated that the Gospel "invites us to prepare our hearts to receive [Christ.] May Advent be a time of purification that leads to love, as we look with hope to the dawn of his coming."
In the remaining days of Advent, let us heed the wisdom of John Paul the Great and Benedict and put first things first; let us indeed convert and prepare our hearts. There will be time soon enough to attempt to solve the problems of the world.
