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"For our better coming to the feast": Mark Frank on Advent as preparation for Christmas

Throughout these "days of holy Advent", laudable Practice has considered Advent observance in the Church of England between the Restoration and the Revolution, and its roots in the Advent observance of the Caroline era and through the Interregnum.  As the season draws to a close, we finish with words from an Advent Sunday sermon by Mark Frank, probably preached in the Caroline years and published in 1672, providing guidance to Restoration clergy.  Frank here exemplifies the common understanding in the Caroline and Restoration eras of Advent as a preparation for the celebration of Christmas. While contemporary liturgies routinely downplay or disapprove of this emphasis, it has both a liturgical and pastoral rationale.  

Frank's sermon is based on the Prayer Book Gospel for Advent Sunday, St. Matthew's account of the Lord's entry into Jerusalem: "And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest".

Tis the business, both Text and Time, the words in hand, the days in hand, the days of holy Advent are to teach us, to sing Hosanna's to our Saviour, to bless God for his coming, to bless him for his coming, all his comings, all his ways of coming to us; to bless his day that is a coming, whence all his other comings come: to bless him in the highest, with heart and tongue, and hand, to the highest we can go, that he may also bless us for it in the highest.

That it might be done the better, Holy Church has design'd four Sundays to prepare us for it, wherein to tune our pipes, and fit our instruments and voices to sing Hosanna in the right key, the highest pitch, to praise God as is fitting for Christs coming.

A business sure well worth the doing, and some good time for it worth the observing, if we either think him worth it, that is here spoke of as coming, or his coming worth it. Indeed the coming in the Text is not the coming of that Feast that is now a coming, but it is one of the ways prescribed by the Church for our better coming to the Feast, by preparing with these multitudes some boughs and branches, some Hosannas and Benedictus, some provision of holy thoughts and divine affections for it ...

And we have the multitudes before, and the multitudes that follow, all Patriarchs before rejoicing with Father Abraham at his day, and all the Fathers since; all that went before or follow'd since his coming, former and later Christians for our example. They all in their several Generations thought fit yearly to remember it, and so long, even four Advent Sundays together, to prepare the multitudes and people for it.

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