Advent challenges us to take back

Advent is a superb season if you have attention deficit disorder. Trust me, I know.

Focusing on Advent is a contest of the will (to borrow a phrase from Thomas Aquinas). The liturgist says Advent is a period of preparation for the Christmas Holyday. The scripture scholar insists that Advent, given the readings on John the Baptist, be focused on the end times, or the Second Coming. Another indicates it has traditionally been a Marian time. The ecclesiast insists that Advent is simply the celebration of the new church year!

Depending on your ethnic identity, you'll embrace Advent as the sandwich shaped receptacle of high holy feastdays such as St. Lucy (12/13), St. Nicholas (12/6), Our Lady of Guadalupe (12/12), Posadas (12/16), The O Antiphons (12/17), and many more. This list only takes into account the regular observances. But this year, the bishops inserted yet another theme into December with their focus on the media. Is it any wonder we have a cultural attention deficit problem?

This screaming teapot of themes, doesn't take into account the customary December hyperactivity: office parties, gifts for relatives to purchase and mail, cookies to bake for socials, traffic to bear, finding time for a Christmas date with your spouse, buying gifts for your children, taking a trip to visit parents/children during the holidays, finding the time to enjoy a Kodak moment. It all piles up, so much so that Christmas comes as a relief, rather than a summit.

So, when the first line of the Gospel reading for this Sunday falls from the pulpit, "There will be signs in the sun, the moon and stars," we feel the writer's woes. Harried, hurried folks suffering Advent shock haven't time to look up at the stars, the sun and the moon. When and if they do, it is at the end of a long day when they are taking out the garbage.

The stars are indeed signs of the end times, as well as symbols of days all too distant. Looking up in the winter sky brings back a bittersweet memory, and so we go back inside and fall asleep. Without asking our opinion, the Gospel proceeds, "On the earth, nations will be in anguish, distraught at the roaring of the sea and waves."

The "anguish" is the advent addition of our inability to focus, hyperactivity, and riding a SUV on the drive to distraction. The traffic roars, the TV roars, our mailbox roars, everything seems to roar when all you want is some silence. The scripture is not talking about the Second Coming of Tim LaHaye's novels, but the one your mother warned you about. The final words of the Gospel "Pray constantly for the strength to escape whatever is in prospect," fits like a mitten on a cold day. But squeezing in time for prayer is next to impossible, even with the latest version of Palm Pilot.

So what do you do? Is there a Catholic Ritalin (60 mgs of dogma twice daily) that will make it all right? I don't think so, at least, not one that works for everyone. Is there an Advent biofeedback that one can plug into and turn on with the Christmas lights? I haven't found it. Is there a therapy that can strengthen your heart and focus your mind? Maybe.

Perhaps, I am the wrong person to ask. After all I am ADHD, and feel right at home at the end of the world, as we know it. What I would like to do is form a no meeting Advent support group, that is sort of like those Christmas accounts that banks used to offer. It would be a support group for Christians that have been toyed with once too often. In order to get into this club you need to make a strategic decision to take back at least one small part of your Advent.

I really don't care what part it is, except that it is some part over which you have control and responsibility. You might decide to say the Advent wreath prayer once each week, or maybe lower the number of presents you buy, or perhaps to make one of your presents a donation to charity. To be a member, the dues are to call, write, e-mail each other in the group with a spirit of support and challenge (because each of us knows well how hard implementing our own decision is). Wouldn't it be nice?

Welcome to Advent at the end of the world! I'm here, where are you?

(Rinkoski is the Green Bay Diocese's Family Life director. His e-mail address is trinkoski@gbdioc.org.)