Advent is a season often hidden in plain sight. The four candles of the Advent wreath and the colorful changes to the altar’s hangings communicate that Christmas is coming. The Church’s Advent observance couples and competes (usually unsuccessfully) with all the din and dangle of our holiday cheer (or sneer, as the case may be). This is all obvious, in plain sight for the casual Christian observer.
What is less visible to many of us is Advent’s invitation to prepare for Christ’s coming, not only at the end of time or at the moment of our deaths, but in our hearts now. This is not the welcome of first faith, a decision for Christ, but the welcome of a maturing faith, a full embrace of Christ. Christian mystics often refer to this embrace as “union with God.” The Collect for the fourth Sunday of Advent suggests this kind of coming of Christ: “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen” (BCP, 212).
What might we learn from some of the late medieval English mystics in our preparation for the Advent of Christ in our hearts? The hermit Richard Rolle (c. 1300-1349) believed that the contemplative life was superior to the speculative tradition of the scholastic theologians. In his writings, he described a burning in his heart as he drew closer to God.
The Augustinian Walter Hilton (1340-96), however, was more cautious about these kinds of experiences, seeing them as potential distractions that could draw one away from God. Unlike Rolle, Hilton has a much more positive view of the active life — one does not need to become a hermit or anchoress to meet God.
Margery Kempe (1373-1438), a married woman, had a spirituality fixed on the personal suffering of Christ. Unlike Hilton and Rolle, this manifested in pilgrimage, wandering to experience places described in Scripture and the lives of the saints that had captured her imagination. Despite their differences, all three sought to prepare themselves and others for the advent of Christ in the heart and an experience of union with God. What unites them is their their language about the heart, reflecting an affective spirituality.
In his best-known work, The Scale of Perfection, Walter Hilton offers this following counsel to an anchoress seeking union with the Triune God: “Jesus sleeps in your heart spiritually as he once slept bodily when he was in the ship with his disciples, but they awoke him for fear of perishing, and at once he saved them from the tempest. Do the same yourself; stir him with prayer and awaken him by crying with desire, and he will soon get up and help you.”[1]
Margery Kempe’s gift of tears, which manifested in often excessive behavior, drew and repelled various people to her. She traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East on various pilgrimages seeking Christ in holy places. Yet Christ reminds her in her visions, ““always think that I sit in your heart.”[2] Her outward journeys were ultimately intended to prompt an inward journey. In what ways might we “sit” in the heart of Christ this Advent? In what ways might our Advent journey be a journey of the heart? Could it be adopting the practice of simple silence? Perhaps “sitting” in the heart of Christ means more intentional forms of contemplative prayer?
This is when the busyness of this time of year can be an obstacle to finding time for silence, prayer, and reflection. The opposite is true, too, that small doses of silence, prayer, and reflection can have a powerful effect on our spiritual lives during the hectic weeks leading up to Christmas:
- a short pause between tasks at work to contemplate an icon,
- turning off the lights and lighting your dinner table with Advent candles,
- holding silence longer than usual before or after grace at meals,
- lingering for a few moments with a short scriptural devotional in the morning or at night instead of lingering with your device,
- persisting in attendance at worship when you’d rather sleep,
- turning off the television and taking a long, quiet walk.
There are other devotions one might try — the rosary, for example, or attending that Advent book study at your parish. Richard Rolle struggled greatly to find peace within, union with Christ. Unlike Kempe and Hilton, he turned to the hermit’s life. But he tells us, “The peace known by lovers of Christ comes from their hearts being fixed, in longing and in thought, in the love of God.”[3]
Little attempts to add silence and reflection to life can sometimes feel frustrating or fruitless. Yet over time, through graced practice, they can become reassurances of the Spirit’s presence and work, mediating Christ in our hearts. They can become means of grace — by which we experience the hopeful message of that beloved Advent hymn, “Comfort, Comfort, Ye My People,” which includes the lyric, “comfort those who sit in darkness and mourning.”
The world around us may be stormy, our lives may be in disarray, God may seem asleep, but by fixing our attention and our prayer on the heart, we can experience an awakening of Christ’s presence within us, and with it the peace that passes understanding (Phil. 4:7). In this way we can begin to discover the secret of Advent that is often hidden in plain sight. The presence of the Christ within our hearts.
[1] The Scale of Perfection (Classics of Western Spirituality Series), 122
[2] The Book of Margery Kempe (Penguin Classics), 182.
[3] The Fire of Love (Penguin Classics), 76.
The Rev. Kevin Goodrich, OP, PhD, is a life professed member of the Anglican Order of Preachers (The Dominicans). He is the author of a new book, A Pilgrimage of the Heart: Walter Hilton and the English Mystical Tradition.