(each tab above has prayers and reflections for the weeks of Advent)

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Why a 7 Week Advent?

(Article adapted from The Very Reverend William H. Petersen.)

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The Proposal and Its Origin: The Very Rev’d William H. Petersen is the founder and convener of the Advent Project Seminar in the North American Academy of Liturgy (people who are liturgical scholars and/or teach worship in the seminaries of a broad spectrum of churches including Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and United Church of Christ). The aim of the seminar is to promote a calendar change in our liturgical year that would expand Advent to the seven weeks before Christmas.

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Why Expand Advent?

• The four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas go very quickly and are already fully enmeshed with the cultural Christmas that has come to exist.  Which means time and energy for Advent is diminished. 

• By having more time, and starting to prepare a little earlier we give ourselves an opportunity  to be more intentional about really using the weeks before Christmas as a time of preparation.

• There are also 2 themes in the Advent Season: (1) the major theme is meant to be the “end times,” which is to say the goal of fulfillment of all the implications of Christ’s resurrection for humanity and creation.  (2) the secondary theme, which has come to be more significant to most, is the journey towards the birth of Christ and the celebration of the incarnation.  The combination of these two themes allow us to look to the past and what has come, but to not forget that Christ’s coming was not just about then.

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What Will Change?

Very little. (“Whew, what a relief!” I hear you exclaim as you read this). The lections (readings) for an expanded Advent season are in place as the ones we already hear in our three-year cycle. Listen closely this year and see if, in fact, there is not a change in the atmosphere and tone of the lessons after All Saints’ Day really concludes the long season of Pentecost. There will be, of course, some musical emphases that appear in hymns specifically for Advent. Weekly antiphons that are based in the Messianic titles for Christ that form the verses of “O come, O come Emmanuel” may also help us focus on the major theme of the season. The Prayers of the People may be more thematically oriented as well. Advent blue will replace Pentecost green three weeks earlier this year; We will use a different arrangement of candles to mark the passing of weeks; and, finally, with an expanded Advent, we may come to the celebration of Bethlehem with a clearer understanding of why we are embarking once again on the annual pilgrimage of the liturgical year.