Advent differs from Seinfeld in at least one significant respect. Advent is a season about nothing. But unlike the pointless drifting of the characters and stories in Seinfeld, Advent is ordered toward and by a purpose that gives it meaning.
It is a staple of Advent reflection to emphasize that this is period of watching and anticipation. At least one purpose of the liturgical calendar is annually to re-present the Church’s understanding of creation, fall, and redemption. The common refrain is that, expressing the time of waiting between the Fall of Genesis 3 and the fulfilment of the prophecy we find there in the infancy narratives of the Gospels of Ss. Matthew and Luke. But this tell us that Advent is, or at least should be, a time of emptiness—of nothing.
It is difficult to think of the weeks of Advent as “empty,” busy as they are with shopping, pageants, parties, caroling, decorating and other rituals of the “holiday season.” But these are all distractions from the vacuum that Advent is supposed to represent. Nor is it easy to think of Advent as a season of darkness, as we should, when our houses, neighborhoods, and cities are irradiated with bright, colorful, and festive strings of lights. Everywhere we turn, we are confronted with frantic—indeed chaotic—business and swirling illumination, all of which, again, distract us from the dark nothingness—the “true meaning”—of Advent.
If we are really anticipating something, then that “something” must be missing. There must be a void—a gap in time—between now and the something for which we wait. And if we are waiting for light to dispel darkness, we must “see” the darkness that is to be removed. Advent is the recognition of the dark nothingness of the period between the Fall that effects our damnation and the Incarnation that inaugurates our redemption. To be sure, it is a season of hope; but it is hope for something of which we are now deprived, some thing that is missing. Advent is a season about nothing. As such, Advent is the season of acknowledging evil.
In the fourth century, St. Augustine formulated the classic definition of evil that has informed the Church’s understanding ever since. In his Confessions, St. Augustine wrestled with the problem of the “existence” of evil in a world created by an omnibenevolent God. If God is all good, and God created everything, then every thing is good. Nothing that God has created can be evil and thus nothing that is—no thing that has existence—can be evil. “There is no such ‘thing’ as evil,” said St. Augustine. All that is is good, “since the Creator of all nature is supremely good,” he explained in his Enchiridion.
For St. Augustine, evil is the “privation” of good. Evil is not in any thing, but rather in the corruption, incompleteness, or violation of the created thing. Evil has no substance; it is the absence or falsification of substance. It has no reality of its own, but rather is the perversion of the real. Because created things are not immutable, they can be “diminished,” and evil is the word we use to describe that diminution. “When a thing is corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the good,” contended Augustine. “Nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some actual entity.”
No matter how much a thing has been diminished, corrupted, or deprived of its complete goodness, some goodness must always remain if the thing still exists. If there is no such “thing” as evil, then everything that is must somehow be good. The process of redemption is the activity of driving out all the evil, so that nothing remains but the good. “Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil.”
All of which is to say that Advent is a season about evil: the privation of the good that is in the human person, created as we are in the image and likeness of God. Advent is the privileged season – the “acceptable time” – in which to recognize the corruption, the diminution, the perversion of the good of creation awaiting its redemption in the new creation to perfected goodness in Christ.
Veni, veni Emmanuel; Captivum solve Israel, Qui gemit in exilio, Privatus Dei Filio.
In Advent, we acknowledge the darkness of sin and corruption, while awaiting the light of completion and wholeness. And because we know the end of Advent, we (should) order our Advent activities toward that end. We partially evil beings—we imperfect persons—order our lives toward the complete good—the perfect Person. We kindle four candles over four weeks, dispersing partial darkness—the privation of light—to welcome the Light that dispels all darkness. The good that remains in us can be redeemed. The nothing can be driven out, leaving no thing in us but the good.
Kenneth Craycraft is a licensed attorney and the James J. Gardner Family Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology, the seminary for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. He holds the Ph.D. in theology from Boston College, and the J.D. from Duke University School of Law.
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