Advent and Christmas with the Church Fathers 

Early in our marriage, my wife and I were determined to establish an atmosphere of faith in the home for our children. We wanted every day to be centered on Jesus Christ, the week would begin with the celebration of the Liturgy, and the year would be punctuated with the traditional feasts and fasts of the Catholic Church.

Beyond the regular and common feasts of Easter and Christmas, or the major fasts of Lent and Fridays, we decided that we would try to follow some of the lesser-known fasting seasons. One such fasting season is the period leading up to Christmas, called in the Eastern Christian tradition St. Philip’s Fast.

Rather than listening to Christmas music directly after Thanksgiving, we would focus on music that is distinctly anticipatory: Advent hymns. We would abstain from meat and sweets and reserve those for Christmas Day and its season. Instead of an early Christmas season before Christmas even begins, Advent would be there to sharpen our desire for the coming of Christ.

Advent and Christmas with the Church Fathers, TAN Books’ new self-guided seven-week retreat, begins with that principle in mind.

Unlike some other devotionals I have used, Advent and Christmas with the Church Fathers does not take you by the hand, day by day. Instead, it is a seven-week, theological retreat that guides readers in meditating on the mystery of the Incarnation. Every week is packed with selections from the orations, commentaries, and poetry of authors from the Greek, Latin, and Syriac traditions, as well as from Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Holy Mass. And the weeks are punctuated with various questions to meditate upon.

The book begins with the first week of Advent in the Roman calendar and concludes with Candlemas in early February. The first week of the retreat asks readers to consider the virtue of hope. By hope, we are confident in the attainment of that for which we hope. It is a gift from God to hope in eternal life and eternal joy – to not only be optimistic, but expectant of success and of the full enjoyment of God’s splendor.

In fact, to begin with hope is at all times suitable while we live in this world of loss and gain. The grounding of this hope is that we, as Christians, have been made co-heirs of the Kingdom, citizens “not of this world.” And as a result, we are sojourners – as foreigners in a foreign land – on the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, which by Christ we have a genuine claim. If anyone is going to set out on such a journey, hope of arrival is necessary before the first step can even be taken.

To enkindle this hope, Advent and Christmas, with its selections from the Fathers and reflective questions, helps the reader pray with the best of the Church’s teachers and guides – those who have already made the journey and now intercede for us on the other side.

The work is clearly conscious of the coherent vision of the Christian year as a living participation in the Christian mysteries. A quotation from Virgil Michel counsels us to think of the liturgical cycle as the divine sacrifice daily repeated in the Church: “As we are unable to exhaust our capacity for the Divine in a day or a year, the Church of Christ, with the infinite patience and the tender love of her divine Founder, continues to present to us the divine means of living Christ, thereby truly fulfilling her mission of achieving the ever increasing plenitude of the Redeemer.”

The second, third, and fourth weeks of Advent are dedicated to Peace, Joy, and Love, respectively – adapting the first triad of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Reflecting on Peace, the text calls to mind the patient endurance required in this life. By taking note of the fact that we celebrate the Immaculate Conception during this second week in Advent, the book reminds its readers of Mary as a model and incites one to draw closer to Christ through the maternal love of Mary.

The third week of Advent, which begins with Gaudete Sunday, is a time of joy, and the book challenges its readers to consider what “joy” is. In meditating with the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, we can see that joy is the fruit of love, the fourth week being dedicated to Love.

After weeks dedicated Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, we arrive at Christmastide and the experience of the cause of those virtues on which we had spent the last four weeks in reflection. But the devotional does not end on Christmas Day. Instead, the text might be divided into two parts: the Fast and the Feast.

One of the greatest strengths of Advent and Christmas with the Church Fathers is that it does not stop at the singular day of Christmas. Instead of making a book that ends on a single day, TAN has created a retreat that does not consider Christmas as the finish line. By inviting the reader to continue praying through the entire feasting season, the devotional makes itself a true aid to the Church’s liturgical rhythm.

It is easy to begin Christmas with the opening of presents. Too often, however, the season gets discarded along with the wrapping paper. But in the Gospel of John, we read that the “Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The celebrations immediately following Christmas, which turn our mind to Mary, the arrival of the Magi, the Circumcision, and the presentation in the Temple, demonstrate this “dwelling.”

Advent and Christmas with the Church Fathers draws us to be that dwelling place for Christ, helping the reader turn Christmas and its preparatory season into a start towards a deeper life with Christ.