The Ache of Advent

Grief will come for all of us. It may be a really big grief, like the death of a child, a parent, a spouse, or a sibling. It could be the death of a marriage, the death of a sibling or friend, the loss of your health, a career, or your expectations for your life.   

Grief demands that we learn to be in the world in a different way. We are not the same as we were before this loss, regardless of the circumstances. We now know suffering, perhaps truly extraordinary suffering.  

Not Merry and Bright

If this is your story, when the secular world shifts into full “merry and bright” mode, you may feel even worse. As the dissonance grows between our inner suffering and an external expectation to celebrate, our tender hearts hurt even more. In fact, everything about Advent and Christmas, even in our beautifully liturgical Church, is meant to activate our senses and help us to pay attention to what is happening in this season and to feel.   

As painful as this is, I am grateful for an entire season that gives voice to melancholy and longing. When Advent is observed in the solemn spirit the Church intended, we, the grieving, feel at home in the darkness. Even when the Church reaches the great solemnity of Christ’s Nativity, the joy of Christmas is not external happiness. It is inner joy that comes from knowing that because of Jesus, our suffering is not the end of the story.   

Advent reminds us that we live in the “Already-Not Yet.” Christ was born and rose from the dead and yet will still come again. We are held by God in our sorrow, yet we still wait, mourning in a valley of tears. There is a tender ache to these dark, liturgical days when our hearts are broken.  

A Season of Painful Uncertainty

In 2017, I lived an Advent of painful uncertainty while pregnant with our son, John Paul Raphael. Diagnosed with Trisomy 18, he was not expected to live long after birth. I longed to settle into the peaceful expectation of a joyful nativity, but I knew our baby’s arrival included the expectation of death.   

Yet it was precisely in my fear and suffering that the Lord met me. He taught me to let myself be loved in my brokenness. When our baby died, He showed me there were lessons to be learned in my grief, lessons that are similar to those the Church offers us through Advent.  

Advent and Grief Emphasize a Longing for Heaven 

Advent, like grief, reminds us that the world is broken, and we long for all to be made right. Advent invites us not to rush to the Nativity but to cry out from the darkness. Advent reminds us of the promise that we will be restored. The Lord is already at work in your grief, even if you don’t feel it yet. Being made new in the depths of your heart can take a very long time.   

Grief is a reminder that this world is not our home. It brings an ardent longing for Heaven. After my son died, I didn’t know how to be here without him. Grief taught me to detach from the world and gave me an eternal perspective. Advent invites us to the same.   

Advent calls us to audacious hope. Father Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit priest who was killed by the Nazis for his resistance, said: “Being shattered, being awakened … only with these is life made capable of Advent” (in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas p. 86).   

It was not easy to find hope after John Paul Raphael died, but in time, the Lord revealed a mystery in my grief. I had been shattered and was now being awakened. Grief helped me realign my priorities. It slowed me down. It stripped away the superficial layers of relationships and showed me who in my life was willing and able to go deeper with me.  

Even when grief was ugly, and I struggled with rage, comparison, and doubt, the Lord reminded me that He is faithful and all His promises will be fulfilled.  

We need the promise of Advent, even when it aches. We need to know that this wilderness of grief is not the end of the story. We need the promise that our lives will not always be this painful.   

The promise helps us hold onto hope, not as an ideological concept, but as a person.  

Hope hides in a manger and hides in your grief to remind you in the ache of Advent that there is something greater than this dark, lonely exile. Hope is coming for you in your grief.   

Wherever you find yourself this Advent, may you let the Lord love you as you ache, confident of the promise that your grief is not the end of your story.