JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

A season of Hope

by

20131224

Ad­vent is a four-week pe­ri­od in the Chris­t­ian Church in which the church an­tic­i­pates the birth of Christ on Christ­mas Day–his­toric­i­ty aside. (This year Joseph Atwill's well-pub­li­cised re­search ar­gued there was no ac­tu­al per­son who was Je­sus the Christ; in ad­di­tion there is the com­mon un­der­stand­ing that, had He been born at all, it wouldn't have been on De­cem­ber 25.Many Christ­mas tra­di­tions are based on the non-Chris­t­ian cel­e­bra­tions of the win­ter sol­stice.)

Ad­vent, in the church, re­volves around some key im­ages and ideas: it is a sea­son of prepa­ra­tion as we wait for the birth of the ba­by in the manger, but it is al­so the time when we read of John the Bap­tist, Je­sus' pu­ta­tive cousin, cry­ing in the wilder­ness that the (adult) Christ is com­ing to save hu­man­i­ty from it­self.Chris­tians think of Ad­vent as a time of hope. I think at Ad­vent of a time of Hope.

Hope Aris­mendez, to be pre­cise. Hope, Sean, Akeil, Amy, and now Keyana, join a kind of hor­ror reel in my mind, es­pe­cial­ly at this time of year, pre­cise­ly be­cause of the con­trast of our ven­er­a­tion, churchi­cal and sec­u­lar alike, of an in­fant while in re­al life we beat, rape, ig­nore and gen­er­al­ly sav­age our own chil­dren.On Christ­mas Eve, when I was 11 years old, I told my moth­er I was be­ing mo­lest­ed by a close old­er rel­a­tive.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored