ADVENT. - It is the period that begins the liturgical year and prepares for Christmas (v.), as Lent (v.) does for Easter. In the Roman rite it begins with the Sunday nearest the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle (therefore from Nov. 27 to Dec. 3) and thus comes to consist of four weeks; in the Ambrosian rite it begins with the Sunday following the feast of St. Martin (Nov. 11) and lasts about six weeks. Just as Lent intensifies its function as Easter approaches (Holy Week), so too does Advent with the O antiphons (v.) in the Roman rite, and the ferias of exceptato (from 3 to 6 days) in the Ambrosian rite. It has a twofold character: penitential and joyful. Accordingly, in its office the violet color is used and the Gloria in excelsis and the Te Deum are omitted, while the singing of the Alleluia and the playing of the organ continue, though the organ is silent in the offices of Sundays (only in the Roman rite and with the exception of the 3rd Sunday) and of ferias (also in the Ambrosian rite).
I. ORIGIN
1. In the East
By the time the Nestorian heresy declared itself, there already existed at Constantinople (and, after the Council of Ephesus, throughout the East), probably on the Sunday preceding Christmas, a feast of the Madonna having as its object precisely the virginal conception, but with probable allusions to the divine maternity. The controversy with Nestorius led the defenders of orthodoxy to insist, in the homilies of that feast, on the note of maternity, as did, for example, St. Proclus on Sunday, December 23, 428. The thought of the Fathers may thus be summarized: a recalling of the primitive state of man in the earthly paradise and of his original fall; the divine plan of the Incarnation and the Redemption; Mary, the new Eve; her divine maternity foretold by the prophets, announced by the Angel, manifested on the day of Christmas and subsequently acknowledged by the Magi. But the remembrance of the mysteries preceding the coming of the Messiah required the commemoration of the Precursor. And in fact we know that in the middle of the 5th century at Jerusalem, Antioch, and elsewhere St. John the Baptist was commemorated on the Sunday preceding that dedicated to the Mother of God. After the 5th century, however, it must be noted how in the East the feasts came to be ordered no longer according to a logical criterion (Christ as the center of the liturgical year and everything in function of him), but according to a chronological one. Therefore the Annunciation, or feast of the Divine Maternity, was moved to March 25, and then the Sunday, or the days preceding Christmas, were dedicated to the personages of the Old and New Testament who prefigured or prophesied Christ.
2. In the West
Once the attribution of the A. to St. Peter and its existence in the times of Tertullian and St. Cyprian have been discarded, the most ancient testimonies are a passage of St. Hilary (d. around 366) which says: « Sancta Mater Ecclesia Salvatoris adventum annuo recursu per trium septimanarum secretum spatium sibi indicavit » (CSEL, 65, 16) and a canon of the Council of Saragossa (380): « Viginti et uno die, a XVI Kal. Januarii, continuis diebus, nulli liceat de ecclesia se absentare, nec latere in domibus, nec nudis pedibus incedere, sed concurrere ad ecclesiam » (PL 85, 66). Although Wilmart defended the authenticity of the first (in Revue Bénédict., 27 [1910], p. 500 ff.), and Cabrol the importance of the second, nevertheless these two texts are still considered by some to be scarcely probative, so that the existence of the A. at the decline of the 4th century remains still doubtful. There was perhaps in embryo a preparation for the two feasts of Christmas-Epiphany, as the exhortations of a Spanish ascetic (ca. 400) to a friend suggest, to spend holily the last days of the year and the feasts celebrated therein, even by abstaining from the use of marriage. The fact is that in the 5th century there exist two aspects of the A., one at Ravenna, of Eastern (theological) spirit, the other in Gaul, essentially ascetic (penitential) and, at the beginning, foreign to any framing within the liturgical year. The roll of Ravenna, containing 40 prayers preparatory to Christmas and judged to be of an age close to the Council of Ephesus (430), is the clearest and surest testimony of the A. in the West. It is, one might say, illustrated by the homilies of St. Peter Chrysologus for the feasts of the announcement and conception of St. John the Baptist and of the virginal conception of the Madonna, celebrated most probably on the two Sundays before Christmas. The affinity with the Eastern conception is clear and finds an explanation in the residence at Ravenna of the imperial court, closely bound to Constantinople.
In Gaul, on the other hand, the A. has the same function for Christmas that Lent has for Easter; St. Gregory of Tours (d. 594) says it was willed by Perpetuus, sixth bishop of Tours. It consists in a fast of six weeks from St. Martin's day to Christmas, 43 days, during which the liturgy takes on a penitential character. There still does not exist an appropriate formulary, which however slowly takes shape with an epilogue in the 7th century, and where the influence of the Eastern conception is noted, to such an extent as to constitute the fusion of the two aspects of the A. This happens to a greater degree in the countries of Gallican influence but not devoid of relation with the East, such as Spain (Mozarabic rite) and Milan (Ambrosian rite), with an A. of six weeks. At Rome the homilies of St. Gregory the Great are the first to attest a true preparatory period for Christmas, which is of 5 weeks in the Gelasian Sacramentary, of 4 in the Gregorian. This latter mode ended by prevailing universally, certainly not because it was a symbol of the supposed 4000 years from Adam to Christ, but by analogical reduction of the holy forty days: therefore through the influence of Gaul, from which in the 7th century the fast was also taken, and later the penitential rites.
II. SPIRITUAL MEANING
While in origin the Eastern A. has no penitential character, in the 8th century it acquires one through fasting which, in the West, in union with prolonged prayer and more frequent rites, creates a time of intensified asceticism in preparation for Christmas. Of this penitential character only an echo remains today in the rites and in the prohibition against celebrating solemn marriages. The A. leads one to meditate on the three comings of Christ, kept alive in the mind by the voice of the prophets and by the insistent preaching of the Baptist: 1) temporal, when, having become incarnate and made man in the most pure womb of the Virgin Mary, he was born in Bethlehem; 2) final, when at the end of the ages he will come to judge the living and the dead; 3) mystical, every time he comes to dwell in or to take greater possession, through Grace, of a soul that has detested sin or performed good works. The Church, through the Gospel lesson of the last coming, on the first Sunday, indicates the starting point and the dominant thought of the whole renewal to be accomplished in order to prepare fittingly for Christmas.