It seems like this time of year, people are so excited for Christmas to come. As soon as the turkey is put into ziploc bags, its off to pick up a Christmas tree, and put lights up on the house. The decorations are pulled out of storage. All the stores play Christmas music.

A friend of mine, a systematic theologian, loves it. She says that its the only time of year when Jesus is treated like a total rock star. Shes right – is wonderful to see the festive way in which our increasingly secular culture greets this season, even if they dont acknowledge the deep theological significance. Trouble is, in jumping the gun, and celebrating Christmas too early, we miss out on the entire season of Advent, which the Church has given us as a means of building this anticipation properly. Advent is a season of penitence and preparation for the great twelve-day-long feast of Christmas. So, I give you five Advent traditions for you and your family.

1. Light up an Advent Wreath and have a family dinner.

Have as many sit-down family dinners as possible, and each evening, prior to the meal, light the candles on the Advent Wreath. Kids, especially, love the romanticism of this tradition. Romantic is exactly the right word! God is romancing this world to embrace the Bridegroom He has sent us. God loves the world, and seduces us to love Him in return.

2. Do family devotions based on the Jesse Tree.

The Jesse Tree tracks the history of the salvation of the world, starting with Jesse, the Father of David and culminating in Jesus. There are a good number of online resources for this. Have the father of the family read the Scripture readings for each day and talk to the children about the meaning of each reading.

3. Make Christmas gifts for each other.

In the not-so-distant past, American families used to spend this time of year industriously making Christmas gifts. Fathers would carve wood, mothers would knit, and children would make all kinds of things for their parents and siblings. Avoid the materialism of the modern age by having beloved things repaired for loved ones. I heard last week about a company that will repair your favorite pair of jeans! It may be that drawer that doesnt open or that appliance that needs a new motor. Maybe some jewelry needs to be repaired.

4. Choose a charity to support.

If your mailbox is like mine, youre getting inundated with requests from charities this time of year. There are many worthy ones. Consider a gift to a family you know struggling from unemployment. Also – consider a gift to charities like Heifer International, WorldVision, Food for the Poor, Anglican Relief and Development, or Anglicans for Life.

5. Prepare for Twelve Whole Days of Feasting.

Put a little money in your budget for saving for the Twelve Days of Christmas. Make plans for a very merry Christmas. Stock the wine cellar and bar. Make candy together. Scour the cookbooks. Discover the joys of homemade toffee, sticky toffee pudding, roasts, and christmas cocktails. Put together gift baskets. Make plans for decorating your house with a Christmas creche, a tree, garlands, wreaths, and lights. Leave everything up until Epiphany (January 6th). To some, this may seem luxurious, but if you cut back during Advent – youll have plenty of savings for a very merry Christmas.

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American creation in the traditions which we keep, but we are far from unique in turning to God to give thanks for all of His blessings. In the very opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, man turns to God to give thanks. Cain and Abel, with vastly different motives, give thanks to God by the offering of the very best of the produce of the land. The Scriptures are, in fact, filled with examples of thanksgiving being offered. In the Temple period, there was a specific kind of sacrifice called the Sacrifice of thanksgiving. The Psalmist refers to this saying: Whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me.

Jesus himself offers us a perfect example of thanksgiving. In the accounts of the Feeding of the 5,000, we see Him take the bread and fish and give thanks for them. Thanksgiving is the means of blessing and Jesus calls upon it to bless the gifts He offers. This was a very Jewish means of blessing. Many of the ancient Jewish blessings begin in thanksgiving.

Thus, in the ultimate blessing of bread, the Holy Eucharist, we see blessing by thanksgiving. For, the term eucharist is simply the Greek word for thanksgiving. The Church gives thanks to God for the mystery of redemption by a wondrous mix of remembrance and blessing. Remembrance, however, means much more than our modern American understanding. It means to make present again or to know again. This was the meaning of the Greek word anamnesis. The Eucharist is the means by which the Church experiences the mystery of redemption afresh, not in a crude parody, but in a real and substantial way, for it is Christ who gives Himself to us under the accidents of bread and wine. Blessing, as well, is not so much a pat on Gods back, but the attitude of the humble – a recognition that we are not responsible, that everything is a gift. What gift could be greater than the salvation offered to the world on the Cross?

In this way, the American celebration of a Thanksgiving is rather inferior. But, I would submit to you that it is profound nonetheless. The reason is that Thanksgiving, in all its forms, is accomplished by what we have already mentioned – remembrance and blessing.

This Thanksgiving, remember all the goodness and kindness of God in your life and bless Him for it. For God is the author of every good and perfect gift. He is responsible not only for employment and checking account balances, but for even the mundane things like turkeys in the oven and every little cranberry and potato. This is the inescapable truth of human life – that we are born into this world with nothing – everything comes from God. Thanksgiving is a great day to call that to mind and bless the name of God for it.

Daily routines are important. It seems that one little interruption in our routine will throw a whole day off track. It can be as little as the coffee maker malfunctioning, or running out of toothpaste, or not being able to listen to our favorite radio show on the way to work. The reason is that the whole creation operates in a daily rhythm – sunrise and sundown, breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are flowers that open during the day and close at night. The ocean has tides and animals like chickens retreat to their coops when the sun goes down.

What we see in the created order is Gods plan of an ordered life, divided into days and hours, with seasons and times of year. This is reflected in the Churchs calendar, but also in the grand vision which the Church has for daily prayer. Many times, people get the impression that the Gospel is about God creating a well-rounded human being. In fact, it is about God inviting man to share in His divine life. Will this make a better man? To be sure – but at the end of the day the Christian life is not primarily about morality or virtue. It is about the practice of the presence of God, or as Abbot Dom Marmion put it – the Sacrament of the Present Moment.

The Christian is bidden by Saint Paul to pray without ceasing. (1 Thess. 5:17) This may seem to many to be an impossibility, yet the consequence of the indwelling Holy Spirit is that the presence of God is a given in the life of the Christian. It needs to be practiced. This begins in a routine of daily prayer. For instance, the key to keeping a kitchen clean is the discipline of loading the dishwasher every evening and emptying it every night. The key to keeping your car running well is regular oil changes. You see, the discipline initiates and maintains the continual practice.

Thus, the best suggestion for learning to pray is to start with the commitment of time in the morning and time in the evening for prayer. I would suggest about 15 minutes. It should include some form of adoration, confession, intercession, and scriptural reading. It should also include the most important feature of daily prayer – that of listening. Written prayers serve as the backbone of daily prayer. To some, this may seem insincere. But, how many poets learned to write poetry without reading good poems, and feeling their power? We learn to pray from others. It should be no surprise that Jesus gives his disciples a written prayer – the Lords prayer, and they remember it and pray it.

The best practice for this time of prayer is the use of a designated space. It should be comfortable, not bed comfortable, but a chair or a place suitable for kneeling. Objects of devotion should be placed in view to keep your attention. Icons, crosses, and statues are the best ways to do this.

Next, add prayers throughout the day. Begin the practice of prayer before work tasks, meals, and other routines. The Celtic Church had a practice we know as sweeping prayers. These were the prayers of women as they swept the floors. You see, the life of prayer binds itself to even the most mundane of activities. Why? Because again, the Christian life is about binding the life of man to the life of God. This is prayer. Saint Teresa of Avila said this: Prayer is loving intercourse with God. If daily prayer is not part of your routine, start today!

Someone asked me last Sunday about the Eucharistic fast. I believe that they had offered me a cookie prior to the 7:30 mass. I politely declined, and gave the reason – that I keep the catholic practice of a eucharistic fast from food and drink of one hour prior to mass. Prior to about fifty years ago, it was a very common practice to abstain from food and drink from midnight until a morning mass for everyone but children, the elderly, and the sick. I still hold to this custom.

But, why?

The reason is rooted in the whole reason for fasting – that it cultivates prayer and reliance upon Gods providence. We understand the words of Our Lord: Life is more than food. (Luke 12:23) We spend much of life waiting for the next meal, or working for it. We need to be awakened to the wonderful blessings of the greatest meal we can possibly eat, and a meal for which we cannot labor. This is, of course, the Eucharist itself. A Eucharistic fast allows us to feel hunger for God, and to be thankful when we receive Him into our bodies.

The greater reason is that the fast cultivates prayer. Without prayer, the grace received in the Sacrament has no room to take effect. Why? Because grace is supernatural power and to pray is to distance oneself from natural power. When a Christian prays, he says I am not relying upon myself, but upon God and His grace. As C.S. Lewis once said I dont pray to change God. I pray to let God change me. There is unbelievable grace in receiving the Sacrament prayerfully, and fasting is the best way to cultivate this prayerfulness. It is often very easy to become contented and even presumptuous in our lives, especially if never miss a meal. Have you ever gotten grumpy when youre hungry? Well, you have seen firsthand the fruit of fasting – it tells you that youre not alright, youre not ok. You need grace. And – more than all – you need the love of God.

If you have never done so before, consider taking up the Eucharistic Fast. Skip that muffin or bowl of cereal on the way out the door. Pray for God to help you, and prayerfully receive His grace.

Two weeks ago, I had the wonderfully exciting opportunity to attend a meeting of the Prayerbook and Common Liturgy Committee of the ACNA in Long Beach, CA. It was attended by two liturgy professors, four parish priests, three bishops, and the preeminent theologian of the last many decades, Dr. J.I. Packer. I was there serving as liason for the Catechesis Task Force. Why all the fuss over the prayerbook? Well, to many of you, the prayerbook is a dear part of your lives. You have grown up on its words, and even simple changes can be disturbing. The reason, I suspect is that we intuitively know as Anglicans that the words of the prayerbook express clearly the faith we hold. So, it’s important that the words convey clearly that Faith.

One of my favorite parts of our liturgy is the epiclesis. The term means “invocation” and it refers to the point at which the celebrant of the mass invokes the Holy Spirit upon the elements of bread and wine at the altar. In the realm of Anglicanism, this is a point at which the American churches differ from the English prayerbooks. The story goes that when Scottish Anglicans asked the Archbishop of Canterbury for a prayerbook in the early 1600s, Archbishop William Laud sent them a prayerbook of his own design. This was the Scottish Book of 1637. It contained a number of distinctions from the English prayerbooks. One of them was the inclusion in the eucharistic canon of the epiclesis, just as the Eastern Orthodox Churches had always had. And, when Samuel Seabury was sent to be consecrated by a group of Scottish Bishops to be the first American Episcopal Bishop, one of the “terms” was that American prayerbooks had to include the epiclesis. So it has been ever since.

The exact language is as follows:
“And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.”

Our inclusion of the epiclesis is a bit odd, considering that it is not the tradition of western churches to include it. The Roman Missal, for instance, has never included it. In the western tradition, it is the Words of Institution, recalling Christ’s words which are the essential form, effecting the change of the bread and wine. In the Eastern Church, it is the epiclesis which effects the change. This is one of those points on which Anglicans provide a via media, or middle way between the Latin west and the Orthodox east. We have it both ways. Perhaps it’s not entirely consistent, but it’s reflective of the two truths – that both the Word and the Holy Spirit are what give us the Sacrament.

I’m pleased that the Prayerbook Committee has seen fit to keep the epiclesis in future iterations of the eucharistic canons and look forward to someday using them!