In 2007, Gracewing published a collection of monastic conferences and homilies by the then Dom Hugh Gilbert, who at the time was the Abbot of Pluscarden Abbey. It was entitled Unfolding the Mystery (a more recently published set of reflections is entitled Living the Mystery). At the beginning of a conference for Christmas Eve, Dom Gilbert asks his brethren what it is that they might with justification expect from the celebration of the coming of Christ.
We can expect, each of us can expect - through the celebration of Christ's Adventus - a revival of our faith and our hope and our love.
In addressing the subject of hope, he indicates three ways in which the celebration of Christmas revives our hope.
[The Christ child] revives, first, the hope of a better world here and now, of a change for the good. His birth coincides with the lengthening days. It gives fresh energy in the doing of good: ordinary, daily, mundane good. It sends us out to battle once again. Our sense of it all being somehow worth it finds itself strangely rekindled by that Mother and Child.
And secondly:
[The Christ child] revives the hope, looking higher, of the Kingdom to come. He's already a fulfilment, by way of cross and resurrection, of the hopes of the Chosen People: those hopes of God reigning and idols toppling, of a new covenant, of a gather people and Gentiles converted, of a new Presence, of a new purity and inward renewal, of the forgiveness of sins, of the Messianic king. All these promises have a first, unfinished but real, fulfilment in the Church and in her saints.
He revives our hope, thirdly, personally, for heaven. In the Collect for Christmas night, we pray to "enjoy in heaven the joys of him whose luminous mysteries we celebrate on earth". The best is yet to come, for each of us.
