What Are We Waiting For? Re-Imaginig Advent for Time to Come by Willam H. Petersen

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This is a book “about” Advent rather than perhaps a book “for” Advent. Petersen points to the problem that Advent has essentially been lost, drowned under Christmasyness – both inside and outside the Church.

For the Church the challenge is that we are trying so hard to keep the Christ in Christmas that we don't have the time, or energy, to explore Advent. Advent, in Petersen's vision of it at least, is not primarily a period of preparation for Christmas – the themes of Advent are not those that bring us to the celebration of the feast of the Nativity of Christ, but those that look beyond to the second coming, the fulfilment of the promise, the new heaven and new earth.

Part of Petersen's answer is to follow the Orthodox practice of having a longer Advent – which in a way I tend to already do as I usually start those Advent books with daily readings at least a week if not 2 before Advent knowing that there will be plenty of books during Advent when they won't get read and so hopefully in this way I will make it to Christmas on time.

His particular scheme is to have a 7 week Advent based around the Advent O anthiphons, (although as shops push the start of Christmas preparation earlier and earlier would we end up having to further extend Advent to keep ahead of them?).

This would mean Advent Sunday would fall between 5-12^th of November. Petersen is writing in the USA and so is suggesting a transition directly from All Saints to Advent. There is an attractive logic to his proposal, but here in the UK we would need to fit any extended Advent in with Remembrance. Although a move straight from Remembrance into Advent would also work.

Petersen is keen to keep Christ the King, giving that Sunday Rex Gentium as its antiphon – personally I have never warmed to Christ the King as a feast (and less still to the keeping of “Kingdom Season”) therefore I don't see a strong need to accommodate it within such a radical reshaping of Advent.

The book offers sample services and practical tips, like the fact that “yes, you can have a 7 candle advent wreath”. Petersen is not merely theorising, he is putting forward a case for actual change, and for that should be commended.