Advent: Lent, with Christmas Lights.

[Originally published... for someone else]

How many of us grew up with the concept that Advent was just Lent, only for Christmas? As a child of the '90s, my experience tells me “not many.”

Don't worry, this isn't going to be the standard “spirituality over materialism” Christmas special that you usually get this time of year. After all, if 40 years of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” isn't going to convince the Internet, then one blog post isn't going to tip the balance. Besides, if you're reading this post, it is unlikely that you need convincing. I can't see many of my readers involved in a Black Friday shootout over the latest gadgets.

However, how many of us take the time to prepare ourselves, spiritually, for the coming of Christmas, and Jesus' birthday? Assuming that neither you nor I are involved in the latest riot at a toy store – my gift shopping was done in August – we are free from any special psychosis-inducing event that comes with the materialism of the season. But what of the day-to-day?

Let us consider, for a moment, just how special Christmas is. Yes, Christ was incarnate, etc, etc … does that really matter? After all, Christmas isn't considered the most important part of the Catholic calender, Easter is. There's a reason that Handel's Messiah has the “Hallelujah Chorus” in the section covering Easter. And, for Easter, we pull out all the stops, don't we? We fast, we abstain, we confess.

What do we do for Advent? If we go by what your average church encourages, probably not as much as we should. While Easter is the day in the Eucharistic calender, Christmas is what makes Easter possible.

So, something to dwell on, if you would (I abhor the word “meditation”); try something that our Pope would be familiar with – the Jesuit practice of imagining. In this case, just imagine if you were the creator of every speck of dust and every watt of electrons, and you make a choice to become – at best – a foot-long, 12-pound creature without the brainpower to utter a coherent sound. And you do this so that you can clean up the mistakes of people who really should have known better. Isn't that a strange thing to do?

It was Fulton Sheen who once described the reason that Jesus had to be incarnate in order for our salvation. He explained it very simply as a form of retribution, of repayment. If you steal my watch and ask me to forgive you, I will, but I want my watch back. Now, what happens when you offend against an infinite Being that is so far beyond our experience, the wonders of time and space are dwarfed? What kind of repayment can we utilize to make amends? Only something just as infinite – in this case, someone.

Yes, I agree, this is quite of bit of depth coming from someone who dedicates pages to shootouts in between bits of history just so he can revenge himself on Dan Brown, et al, but I have my moments.

In the memory of the Infinite Being who became a mewling infant, let's try to put in as much effort to Advent as to Lent. Visit a confessional, give up something if you like. Just … something.

As for me? I take a page from St. Augustine, who once said that “Singing is praying. When one sings, one prays twice.” 

There's a reason that I'm always on the hunt for a perfect rendition of “Angels We Have Heard On High”. 

Week in Review: 6-25-2011

Monday was my Father's Day post. All about my father.

The music blog was one part Two Steps from Hell, one part Tom Smith.


Tuesday was my review of the man who should be running all of Star Wars: Timothy Zahn. So the post was called The Wrath of Zahn.  There's a bonus if you can ID what the blog post title references..

The music blog for Tuesday had a super villian in love, and muppets.

Could I make that up?

I have mentioned in a few other places my character Hashim Abasi. He shows up in A Pius Man, and he's a cop ... from Egypt.  The post is about writing with current events.

The music was an interesting counterpoint: with evil pizza, evil computers, and a body count.

And, for a bonus: my friend Jason discusses leaving Afghanistan.

My week ended with an Index: if you wanted my Lenten and Easter series, it's all here. Have fun. Or try to.

Then, we enter: The Eye of the Storm.

And, if you've been keeping track, my self defense columns from the week are

Evaluating a self defense class 

Defending against chokes from the front

And a review of a local, New York self defense school.

Snarky Theolgy 6: Easter: HE IS RISEN

Today's work of art is provided by the ever-charitable Matthew Funtime.  I don't know about you, but I find it funny as heck.  But then again, I am quite possibly a sick, sick man.

And it's Easter, so there.

When I first started this blog series, I promised you I would introduce you to the rabbit hole that is my faith, but I wouldn't shove anything down your throat as far as my belief in it.  This still holds. I'm going to do a little walkthrough on the story of Easter Sunday.  Pretty much it.

As mentioned in my surprisingly popular blog post on Lent, Easter is more of an estimated time, and it's conveniently located at the start of spring.  Or, if you live on the East coat of the United States, when spring is supposed to start.  It was put in near Passover, and there were a whole bunch of computations put into the matter that I don't pretend to understand. 

I want to say it was programmed up against a pagan Roman festival of Ester, though I think I may have had my wires crossed there, if only because the Catholic church did something similar with Christmas, put up against Saturnalia, a pagan feast that involved an orgy of food and drink and other things that happen at orgies -- it's still celebrated as the office Christmas party.

Anyway ....

Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday.

Yes, I know I considered doing a post on Atheists, but it didn't really fit into snarky theology.  More like snarky good behavior...

This Friday is Good Friday, so guess what I decided to do instead.

You got it, we're looking at the last 24 hours of the pre-Mortem life of Jesus of Nazareth...

Yes, pre-mortem, as opposed to the postmortem life.  Back when I started these Snarky Theology blogs, I told you I had lived in a strange sort of rabbit hole. 

This one is going to be blogged more or less by random trivia I've had kicking around in the back of my head for a while now, so forgive me if there are any minor mistakes.  I would hope no one would try to use me for a footnote on a historical paper.  And, once again, this is my attempt to translate, to the best of my ability, Catholic theology into plain English.  If I thought Catholic education was worth a darn as far as educating Catholics in their own religion, I probably wouldn't bother.  But I don't, so, here we are.