We throw open the vaults of the old Catholic Post newspaper for an Advent reflection from the late Jerry Klein (1926-2017), a longtime and much-beloved Peoria writer and columnist in the secular press and The Catholic Post (and full disclosure, my father-in-law).— Paul Thomas Moore, Catholic Post Online

By Jerry Klein
for The Catholic Post

GERMANTOWN HILLS (from the issue of Nov. 27, 2011) — October and November have passed like smoke from a dying bonfire. It is now that dreaded year-end time of ashes and bare trees.

But if there is an emptiness and silence in our natural world, there is invariably a compensation as well, and this comes in the form of Advent.

I grew up in a time when Lent was all gloom and Advent was all anticipation. And being normal, I probably anticipated material things, that is to say toys, rather than the rich spiritual feast that has been laid out for us. Our big-eyed wonder was reserved for the new BB gun, the Lionel train, the toy soldiers, the model airplane kit and so on.

Only later — sometime much later — did we come to appreciate the gift that never rusts or breaks or threatens to shoot out our eye . . . and to the realization that this infant, whose birth we await, would become our constant companion, our bread of life, our advocate, our model, our
hero, our very sustenance.

Neither did we realize then that the gift, pared down to its essence, was, and is, pure, all encompassing love.

DISTRACTIONS AND LOVE

We celebrate this pre-Christmas Advent with many distractions, such as plastic Santas, lighted deer, cavorting elves and elaborate snow scenes. Nothing wrong here. But amid the glitter and the hype we tend to revert to our childhood when our focus was on the new doll, the new board game, the Schwinn bike, the new ice skates, the new basketball.

At one time the realization comes to us all that these things no longer matter, that they will eventually break or wear out or become useless, and that we don’t need any more ties or handkerchiefs or digital cameras.

We need love.

ADVENT’S ASSURANCE

So here we are amidst the fallen leaves, the withering grass, the pale skies and the bare-limbed trees, ready to greet the day with the lighting of the first candle on the Advent wreath. Didn’t we do this just a couple of months ago? Didn’t we just celebrate Labor Day? What happened to autumn? Where has the year gone?

Winter — real winter — is just over the horizon with leaden skies pregnant with the promise (the threat?) of snow, with cold nights and their deadening, icy grip.

Within a month, the sun will have reached its lowest point along the horizon and will make its welcome turn toward spring. But for now, even in the darkness that descends far too early, there is the bright promise that Advent carries for this is the holy season that is the happy one as well. It is the light that shines in the darkness and turns night into day.

Advent is the year’s promissory note, assuring us that Christmas will come again, that the birth of our Savior is nigh, that all is well, and that we are loved beyond all understanding.

There is a paradox in this season, for on the one hand we are prodded toward a feverish round of buying and giving and at the same time we are urged to forego greed, and to avoid the lures of the secular world and its “Here Comes Santa Claus” atmosphere.

We should, rather, contemplate the reality of what Advent and Christmas are all about. For God has bequeathed His Son to us in a staggering, almost incomprehensible gift of love that became flesh on a silent night, holy night.

But we are still very much like children during this blessed season. And maybe it is not too late to say that I really would like to have one small present under the tree, and that would be a new Red Ryder BB gun.

— Jerry