This past year of COVID isolation has offered considerable time for reading and reflection on the state of affairs in our culture and country. Between that deliberation and the sheer volume of noise over politics, the election, the DC and other riots, the McCarrick Report, and the ongoing debates within the Church, one can lose sight of the liturgical season we are in. The secular issues can grab our attention and become our only focus. Given this state of affairs, the period of Advent and Christmas could not have come at a better time and those liturgical seasons have a lot to say to us.
Relativism and Excessive Individualism
In thinking about the riots and the various cultural “hot buttons” of abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism that are at odds with the non-negotiables (the sanctity of life, marriage, and the nature of the human person) one common denominator surfaces. It is the “me” versus “we” perspective. With that framework, political, social, or economic matters can become only issues of what I want and what I care about. Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech in 2005, coined the term dictatorship of relativism. “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” “It’s all about me” appears as the mantra in many aspects of our culture.
In the context of that relativism, our society is becoming a culture of extreme individualism. Whether it’s economic consumerism, sexual expression/identification, or politics we have become obsessed with self. I’m sure it has always been part of our human makeup, but it seems that it has exploded in recent years to the extent that it can be described as a pandemic. Just as there has been an effort to develop a vaccine for COVID, so we need an antidote to this excessive individualism.
Advent and Christmas As an Antidote
A trait of the extreme individualism mindset is that one feels entitled to have unlimited rights to seek pleasure and/or to acquire what one thinks they want or desire. It is an obligation free perspective. Advent confronts that notion directly. It is the message of anticipation of the fulfillment of God’s covenant with mankind. That expectation of the coming of the needed Messiah and the Advent readings on the end times reminds us of our obligations under God’s covenant. It causes a reflection on what we have failed to do to keep our end of the agreement. Likewise, the season underscores the obligatory response of thanksgiving we have to God for the forgiveness of sins that the coming Messiah brings.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jeremiah 31:33).
The excessive individualism mindset also projects that we are independent creatures who can make up our own reality. However, from a historical, social, theological, and biological perspective, the truth is very clear that we are dependent beings. The Christmas season illustrates that dependency. First of all, Christ’s birth, as is in all births, is a reminder of that. Even the Lord was dependent upon a nurturing mother and protective human father. In turn, throughout our lives, we are dependent upon others and on God for our survival physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We were biologically and psychologically made that way.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).
Advent and Christmas together can be viewed as the celebrations of obligation and dependency. It points to our obligations to follow Christ’s commandment to love God and love neighbor and reminds us of where we fit in God’s salvation history. It also can remind us of the dependency we have on God’s fidelity to us to send his son as savior as the final atonement for our failures that fulfills that covenant. All the trappings of the season, – the music, the lights, the food, the family gatherings, and the masses – all point to the loving dependency that we have on God.
If time is taken to reflect on these two seasons, of what is being celebrated and commemorated, it can move one to think beyond self and in doing so appreciate and show gratitude for the awesome gift of the birth of Christ.
