AN ADVENT "CHRISTMAS CAROL" RETREAT - I

          This Advent, I’m going to try to commit to writing a project that has needled me for over a decade: an Advent retreat with Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol.

          In America, the Christmas Carol has in some ways been relegated to a story for kids, a Christmas “ghost” story.  It’s not – and that was not Dickens’s motivation when he wrote it in 1843. 

          Let’s reflect on some Christian – at least “Catholic compatible” – ideas from the Carol in our preparation for Christmas.  I suggest you read it  [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm ] – and then read it along with me.

I.

          A literary critic once wrote that Dickens had to be a master storyteller if he could manage to turn a story involving death into a Christmas story.  The Carol is not primarily about death.  It’s about repentance and conversion.  Death happens to be one of the tools that facilitates repentance and conversion.

          “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

          That’s the opening paragraph of the Carol.  It’s not even primarily about the main character, but it already connects Marley to that main character by name: Scrooge.

          God also connects to us by name: “I have called you by name; you are mine” (Is 43:1).  The Advent Prophet reminds us of that, adding that the Lord says “I have redeemed you.”  That’s what Advent is about – but redemption doesn’t happen without our contribution.

          Christmas is man’s encounter with God.  We’re not just commemorating an historical event: in these weeks of Advent, the Church’s focus is on the future, not the historical past.  The readings at Mass don’t take an immediately “Nativity of Christ” focus until after December 16.  Right now, they’re a “coming of Christ” focus.

          And when will Christ come to me?  Assuming the Last Day does not first intervene, at my death.  That’s when Jesus will be my judge, when He will either be born in my heart forever – or forever banished from it.  And that’s decided at that particular judgment is final: the Last Judgment is not about appeal but visibility: how history turned out, how on the stage of the world all us actors performed, for weal or woe.

          Reckoning with our mortality is a valid theme of Advent, especially in its first week.  It is a reality none of us will avoid.  It is the door to eternal life – or eternal death.  The question is: how will I stand before Christ when he then appears in my life?