All Saints’, Dorval
December 15, 2024
Composite image from FastCompany.com.
One very minor downside to the fabulous loft renovation project that we completed this year, is that it’s now much more difficult to access the places where we used to hang the Advent banners. We’re still displaying the current one at the front of the church, but we won’t have “Hope, Peace, Joy, Love,” displayed in a row at the back on Christmas Eve (unless someone makes an extraordinary effort with a ladder, I suppose).
Giving the four Sundays of Advent these names and themes is a very recent development – within the past fifty years or so, certainly within the past century – and the Advent wreath itself is not much older: it was invented by a German pastor in the late nineteenth century, who took a wagon wheel and put white candles at the corners for the Sundays, and red candles in between for each weekday of Advent, in order to get his own children to stop pestering him about how many days were left until Christmas. It’s easy to understand why it was soon cut down to just the four candles for the four Sundays, and it was soon adopted by churches as well as households (my mother actually knows the daughter of one of the first German immigrants to introduce the Advent wreath to North America).
The “Hope, Peace, Joy, Love,” schema, though, is anchored by Joy to a far older tradition, because way back in the Middle Ages when the church’s language was Latin, this Sunday was “Gaudete Sunday,” so called from the first word of the collect in Latin: “Gaudete,” “rejoice.”
Back then, the rest of the Advent themes were much gloomier: the four Sundays were officially associated with Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, and Advent was treated as a kind of mini-Lent, with an equivalent emphasis on fasting and penitence. (How successfully that was ever conveyed to the people in the pews, who had just done their autumn slaughtering and would have wanted to eat all that meat while it was fresh, I couldn’t tell you. But Lent in March, when you were running out of milk and eggs anyway, was probably an easier sell.)
Technically, lighting the Advent wreath and referencing the themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love at the beginning of the service are not part of the official Anglican observance of Advent. We should still be singing the Kyrie eleison and proceeding straight to the collect and first lesson. But this constellation of themes clearly speaks to something deeply meaningful for people of faith in the 20th and 21st centuries, given how quickly it has become near universal within the liturgical churches.
So today, by consensus between the Middle Ages and our own, is Joy Sunday. We wear pink (and post Mean Girls-themed memes about it on social media). We are no longer taking a break from a four-week fast, but we can still take the opportunity to consciously embrace joy and think about what it means.
Joy can be hard to come by. We have no shortage of manufactured, consumerist cheer, but that’s not the same thing. The world is full of problems, at home and abroad, and the will to solve them seems to be lacking – when the people supposedly in charge aren’t actively making them worse.
One thing, though, that’s been lifting my spirits, has been watching the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and reading about the extraordinary efforts that went into its restoration. France, a nation that has had four prime ministers in the last year alone, somehow came through on its promise to see the building reopened within five years, and the whole process has shown the good that humanity can do if we work together, at every turn.
It goes all the way back to the beginning: even as the world watched in horror at Notre-Dame in flames in April of 2019, there were three tiny Black Baptist churches in Louisiana that had been burned to the ground by an arsonist. Thanks in large part to the outcry about billionaires pledging enormous sums to the restoration of Notre-Dame, a GoFundMe for the St. Landry churches exceeded its goal of $1.8 million dollars. One of the three churches reopened in 2022; the second is reopening this month, just days after Notre-Dame itself; and the rebuilding of the third is well underway. All the congregations affirm that God is doing new things in their midst and has turned the evil of the arsonist into good.
And while one could certainly argue about whether sums of money should be spent on a cathedral that would go a long way toward solving world hunger if they were applied in that direction, God knows there are far worse uses to which billionaires could put their money, and if Notre-Dame was going to be restored at all, I’m glad there were people who could lay out that kind of cash without missing it (and that’s probably the most positive thing you’re ever going to hear me say about a billionaire from this pulpit).
France has also had similar struggles over laïcité, and what it means in theory and practice, as we have had here, and it was refreshing to see the Roman Catholic hierarchy coming together with people for whom Notre-Dame is a symbol of cultural heritage and national pride, and working together toward a common goal.
The extraordinary stories coming out of the restoration process are far too many in number for me to recount here. Hundreds of artisans from around the world have come together to revive almost-extinct trades and craft a new forêt, the elaborate assemblage of huge hand-carved beams that supports the cathedral roof. That they were able to do so at all is thanks to the work of Rémi Fromont, an architect who in 2012 had surveyed the forêt in incredible detail as part of his work for an advanced degree. The whole enormous structure was reconstructed almost entirely by hand, using techniques preserved in isolated parts of Eastern Europe. The artisans worked through the pandemic lockdown, refurbishing the organ, carving new stone sculptures, and replacing Viollet-le-Duc’s spire that had crashed through the collapsing roof.
One of the results of that long collaboration was an 80-voice choir, composed of “architects, stonemasons, archaeologists, art historians, art conservators” and others, who have been singing together for two years and who performed a rendition of Fauré’s “Cantique de Jean Racine” this past Wednesday at a concert that was part of the reopening festivities, after the festival Mass last Sunday.
So many aspects of the Notre-Dame story remind us of where true human joy is to be found. Frequently, and paradoxically, it comes out of terrible loss. It involves: coming together to work toward a goal that is greater than ourselves; being part of traditions going back centuries; learning to do new things; making things; mastering a technique; rejoicing in beauty; appreciating difference; creating music; and looking toward the future.
It comes from healing and restoring, as in the reading from Zephaniah; from love and gratitude, as in the reading from Philippians; from doing the right thing even when it’s hard, as in the reading from Luke.
So how can we lean into joy this Advent? What can we do that connects us to those who came before and to those who will come after, that lets us learn, and create, and do good, and find awe? What makes the world more beautiful?
I’m cranky about having COVID and having to miss everything that’s happening today! And yet, yesterday I saw a spectacular sunset, and wonderful people are pitching in to fetch things for me that I need, and the moments of joy keep coming even in the middle of it all.
It could be as simple as hugging a child, or lighting a candle, or singing a song, or reading a real book instead of doomscrolling on social media. Notice those small things that bring you joy, and let them lead you also to hope, peace and love.
Let us seek those things that give genuine joy, even in the midst of disappointment and despair. And let us plant oaks that will become cathedrals, long after we are gone, for future voices to sing in.
Amen.
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