Advent
Sunday 2 December marked the beginning of a period of hope and promise in the Christian Church's year that culminates in the coming - the Advent - of Jesus at Christmas (25 December).
Advent and Lent (the latter being a period of abstinence and fasting prior to Holy Week and Easter, which recall the death and resurrection of Jesus) are the two most important seasons in the Christian calendar. Both bear striking resemblances to - as well as important distinctions from - the month of Ramadhan in the Muslim year.
A Christian's readings and prayers during the season of Advent pick up the themes of expectancy and longing which were central to the experience of God of the people of Israel in the pre-Christian period. The prophets anticipated the coming of the Messiah, which Christians believe occurred in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. Christians today celebrate in symbolic form the reality of their own lives and of all people's destiny with God: Christians believe that he who came in human form two centuries ago is also he who will come again.
Central to my Christian faith is the belief that in Jesus, God accepted a human body and mind; God was immersed in human history. Jesus was Emmanuel, which means 'God with us'. Because God has adopted human form, God identifies with the human condition in its struggles and successes, its pain and its joy. God is one with us.
For Christians this is, of course, a significant departure from Jews and Muslims - other 'people of the book' - for neither Jews nor Muslims believe that Jesus is in any sense divine. There is much that divides the three Abrahamic faiths.
There is also much that is common, including a shared line of prophecy, the belief in a single Godhead (how that sits with the concept of divinity in Jesus will have to be the subject of a separate article!) and the expectancy of a final day of reckoning. God-willing, we will also share a life hereafter.
How does this particular Muslim-Christian household mark the parallel periods of Ramadhan and Advent? We have two calendars running side by side, which our two (Muslim) children follow with equal enthusiasm. There is considerable excitement and expectancy in the approach to Eid-Ul-Fitr and Christmas Day, and both festivals will be marked by exchanges of gifts and family gatherings. The daily identification with the poor as (Muslim) Mum fasts will be mirrored by (Christian) Dad's reflections on Jesus's identification with the weak and vulnerable in his birth, as an outcast in a stable.
Perhaps more importantly for our shared life as a mixed-faith family, however, is the divinely inspired sense of awe and compassion which touches our lives and which is, for me, beautifully captured in these words of Maria Boulding, a contemplative Christian nun. I believe that the Advent longing spoken of here transcends the boundaries of religion.
If you want God, and long for union with him, yet sometimes wonder what that means or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes. If you are at times so weary and involved with the struggle of living that you have no strength even to want him, yet are still dissatisfied that you don't, you are already keeping Advent in your life. If you have ever had an obscure intuition that the truth of things is somehow better, greater, more wonderful than you deserve or desire, that the touch of God in your life stills you by its gentleness, that there is mercy beyond anything you could ever suspect, you are already drawn into the central mystery of salvation (from The Coming of God).
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