Happy New Year!

The First Sunday of Advent is today (or as my very deaf friend announced to all the congregation before this morning's Mass in what he is under the impression is a whisper, "Today is Primum Adventum!"). And the first day of the new liturgical year. Here is a portion of the Blessed Cardinal Schuster's reflection on the First Sunday of Advent:

Unlike the old sacramentaries, in which the year began with the feast of Christmas, the Roman Missal enters to-day upon her liturgical cycle. The reason for this is that the Incarnation of the Word of God is the true central point – the milliarium aureum -- which divides the long course of the ages of humanity. In the designs of divine Providence the Incarnation either prepares that fulness of time which heralds the coming of the year of redemption, or, from the cradle of Bethlehem, directs its steps toward the Valley of Josaphat, where the Babe of the Manger awaits the judgement to be pronounced on all the seed of Adam, redeemed by his precious blood. The order of our present Missal is more logical, and corresponds more closely to this lofty conception of history, by which the Incarnation is made the true central event in the world's drama. The early Christians, on the other hand, when they began their sacramentaries with the festival of Christmas, were following, in so doing, the primitive liturgical tradition, which, down to the fourth century, knew nothing as yet of a period of four or six Sundays of preparation for this, the greatest of all solemnities.

It was towards the middle of the fifth century, when, consequent on the christological heresies of Nestorius, the commemoration of the birth of our Saviour rose to great prominence, that a special season of preparation for Christmas began to make its appearance in the Liturgy, at Ravenna, in Gaul and in Spain. The controversy with Nestorius and Eutychius, and the great Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon – in which was solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the two natures, divine and human, united in the one Person of Christ, and in which the glories and prerogatives of the Theotokos were consequently highly exalted – these all gave to Catholic devotion a powerful impulse towards that mystery of Redemption, through the Incarnation, which found in St Leo the Great and in St Peter Chrysologus its most able and enthusiastic exponents.

As the first portion of the Leonine Sacramentary is mutilated and incomplete, it can tell us nothing concerning the early sources of the Advent liturgy in Rome; but in all probability the rite of the papal metropolis, in this as in other respects, was practically identical with that of Naples and with the suffragan see of Ravenna, where Chrysologus – even if he be not the author of the Advent collects in the famous Ravenna Roll – delivered to the people on four different occasions four splendid homilies in preparation for the feast of Christmas.

For many centuries the Roman Church has set aside four weeks for the keeping of Advent. It is true that the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, as well as several other ancient lectionaries, reckon five weeks, but the lectionary lists of Capua and Naples, and the custom of the Nestorians, who know only four weeks of Advent, bear witness in favour of the antiquity of the pure Roman tradition on this point also.

Unlike Lent, with its predominant thought of penance and grief for the deicide about to be consummated in Jerusalem, the spirit of the sacred Liturgy during Advent, full of the joyful announcement of approaching freedom, Evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum quod erit omni populo, is one of holy enthusiasm, tender gratitude, and an intense longing for the coming of the Word of God in the hearts of all the children of Adam. Our hearts, like that of Abraham, who as our Lord says, exultavit ut videret diem meum, vidit et gavisus est, must be full of holy enthusiasm for the definite triumph of humanity, which, through the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ is raised above to the throne of God on high.

The chants of the Mass, the responsories, the antiphons of the Divine Office, are all for this reason bedight with Alleluias. [One paragraph omitted here.]

To-day's station at the Liberian Basilica – in which, from the time of Sixtus III (432-440), a Roman reproduction of the Nativity at Bethlehem has been venerated -- seems as if it would point out to the faithful the true meaning and aim of this season of prayer. It is there that the Præsepe Domini awaits us, the crib of the Incarnate Word, which, while it demonstrates the reality of his human nature, is at the same time the throne and the chair whence he will give us his first Gospel lessons upon obedience, poverty,and the mortification of the senses, whilst condemning pride, sensuality and the deceptive pomp of this world.

The Ordo Romanus of Cencius Camerarius attests that in the 12th century the Pope was still wont to repair on this day to St Mary Major, there to celebrate the stational Mass. It is probable that this custom goes back to the time of St Gregory I, the great reorganizer of the stational liturgy, especially as several of the ancient manuscripts of his works contain the information that to-day's homily on the Gospel, which is read in the Breviary, was actually delivered at St Mary Major.