Waiting...and Waiting...and Waiting: The Essence of Advent

Like every year, the many pre-Christmas festivities of Advent have nearly worn me out. I’ve decided implement a cookie-fast for the last week of Advent just to regain a taste for cookies, which is pretty drastic, considering that the cookie is one of my all-time favorite edible things. Last weekend, however, I was blessed with a very long wait that helped me get re-focused on what Advent is all about. For the first time here in Europe, I experienced a confession line that would rival any I’ve sat through in college. (That is saying something, as any UD people reading this will know.)

It all began amid colored spotlights, lively music, hazy smoke and people walking around carrying trays of cups filled with fiery goodness. No, I wasn’t in a bar, I was at Mass, followed by Adoration. Every second Saturday of the month, a group of young people gathers in the Church of the Holy Spirit on the Viktualienmarkt (literally the victual market—they still sell food) here in Munich for the event “Stay and Pray.” They have Mass at 7:30 pm followed by Adoration until midnight. All passersby are welcome to come in to pray, sing, talk to a priest, or just take a moment of silence. Last weekend the group happened to be celebrating their 40^th anniversary—there must have been at least 200 people at Mass. I saw at least five confession stations, possibly six. I saw lines forming and knew I was in for a wait.

I found a nice short line with three people in it. Can’t be that bad, right? The woman who happened to be confessing at the time seemed to be taking forever, though. After a while, the other women in line began to ask the typical question—what could she be confessing that takes so long to say? After a little longer while, one of them left to find another line. Now, by a while I mean about 45 minutes. By a longer while I mean an hour. Eventually another woman left, leaving only one person between me and the confessional. I decided to stick it out. When it got to be almost 11 (I’d been there since a little before 10, roughly) I realized I was going to be sitting there until midnight. I decided to say a rosary. By the time I was done, I think the next person had finally gotten to go. It would all be faster now, right?

Wrong. The girl in front of me, who had just wanted to go to Confession, not spill her life’s story to the priest, ended up taking at least as long as the last one. I was left on the hard wooden bench, near the open door through which the December air was blowing. I sent my friends on home without me, telling them it would be a while. I started to get existential thoughts running through my head. Why am I here? Do I really mean all this? This existential angst was only heightened by what I heard the priest say about 45 minutes into the confession (they weren’t actually in confessional boxes, just on chairs a little ways away). He asked the girl, “What do you want? When you first came, you said to wanted to go to confession. What do you want now?” Uh-oh, thought I. It was entirely too late at night for this kind of thinking. I don’t remember the results of my existential soul-searching, but I remember that it was a very good mid-Advent mini-retreat. Waiting. What do you want? What are you waiting for? Why are you waiting?

...Ten minutes before midnight, it was finally my turn. I actually had a lady try from another line try and beat me to the spot I’d been waiting nearly two hours for. With a small twinge of conscience, I thought, no way, and sat down quickly to finally confess my sins, if I could remember them after all this time. Apparently the priest realized that time was tight and listened quietly, only asking me at the end what I would ask from Jesus. Closer friendship with Him, and clarity for my life’s path were my answers (good thing I’d had time to think about it beforehand). Since the hour had struck and Benediction was beginning, the priest let me go without much further soul-searching. All in all, the experience was a very good way to crystalize the meaning of Advent for me.

In case anyone is wondering, the aforementioned fiery goodness was tea lights in plastic cups! J

A Late Reflection on the Solemnity of Christ the King

Over the past few years, the feast of Christ the King (November 20) has become one of my favorites. It’s so beautiful and full of light and eschatological. This year, on the evening before the feast, I finished reading the biography of Sophie Scholl, a 21-year-old resistance fighter against the Nazis. Sophie’s story speaks to me because she was about my age, a college student who lived the ideals of the philosophy and theology books that she loved to read. Anyway, the story ended with her execution by guillotine in February 1943. I must have cried for an hour after reading how she was arrested, put through a show trial and condemned to death all in a matter of days, with barely time to say goodbye to her family. The only way I could stop crying that night and finally go to sleep without having to get up for a Kleenex every five minutes was by thinking of St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in which he calls Christ the first-fruits of the dead, i.e. the first of us to rise from the dead, without even realizing that this was one of the readings for the next day’s Mass.

Here in Munich, a city once quite in the grip of the Nazi regime, many resistance heroes were remembered on the feast of Christ the King. Among them were Bl. Fr. Rupert Maier, a local priest who spoke out against the regime, and Bl. Clemens August Cardinal Graf von Galen, a bishop known as the “Lion of Münster” for his sermons against the Nazis, especially their program of euthanasia. Both of these men only survived the regime because their deaths would have made them martyrs in the eyes of the people. The solemnity of Christ the King also became the day for the German Catholic youth to profess their faith; this day of profession had previously been the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity until the regime chose that day for the national sport festival.

Professing Christ as King is, however, goes beyond setting up the Kingdom of God over and against an oppressive political system. Proclaiming Christ as your King involves setting yourself against the values of the world—‘world’ here referring to the aspects of our world which are not of God. Thinking about this made me think of having dual nationality. The US government does not encourage this because a person who is a citizen of two countries must obey both countries’ laws, which may conflict with each other. This is similar to being both a citizen of the world and of the Kingdom of God, two realms whose laws quite often contradict each other.

Shortly before Christ the King I also read an article by Dr. Marcelino D’Ambrosio of Crossroads Ministries about how this solemnity reminds of the second coming of Christ, when Christ will come back to earth in glory to judge the living and the dead. This judgment will be based on one thing: “whatsoever you do for the least of my people, that you do unto me.” We are citizens of a Kingdom in which the laws are: love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself. This includes feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick and imprisoned. (See Matthew 25: 31-46.) These are the commandments of the King, and if we do not carry them out to the best of our ability, how can we expect eternal life with him?

Back to Sophie Scholl and her fellow students who formed the resistance group “The White Rose”. In the spring of 1942, she became convinced that mankind would not allow Hitler to win in the end. She wrote, “[i]ch will versuchen, mich auf der Seite der Sieger zu schlagen”—“I want to try to set myself on the side of the winners“ (Beuys 375). This is perhaps partly due to the fact that she expected the war to be over soon, based on how badly things were going in Russia, but it also shows great confidence in God and humanity. Christ really has already won the battle with evil, has already conquered death. All that remains for us to do is to testify to this victory in acts of love and justice, empowered by the grace of the Holy Spirit and Christ in the Eucharist.

Sources:

Beuys, Barbara. Sophie Scholl. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2010.

D'Ambrosio, Marcelino. Feast of Christ the King: Last Judgement and Sins of Omission. http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/806/Christ_the_King___Last_Judgment.html