'Came to visit us in great humility': Cranmer against the Advent police

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now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility ...

Despite what the Advent purists tell us, that Advent stands entirely apart from Christmas, that any anticipation of the celebrations of the Lord's Nativity pollutes Advent, Cranmer's collect for the season - prayed from Evensong on the eve of Advent Sunday until Christmas Eve - sets before us, throughout Advent, morning and evening, the approach of the Nativity.

Cranmer could, of course, have composed the Advent collect without any reference to the Nativity. This is the case, after all, with the collects for Advent II and IV. While, however, this may be true of those two collects, it is not the case with the pre-1662 collect for Advent III:

Lord, we beseche thee, geve eare to our prayers, and by thy gracious visitacion lighten the darkenes of our hearte, by our Lorde Jesus Christe.

It is difficult, I think, to contend that this collect is not an anticipation of Christmas. The use of 'gracious visitation' to describe the coming of Christ is the same phrase used for the Incarnation in the Advent collect. What is more, 'gracious visitation' is very unlikely to refer to the Lord's coming in judgement, which the Advent collect describes in quite contrasting terms ("when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead"). 

Added to this is how Cranmer's Advent III collect employs the language of light, echoed in the Johannine prologue read as the Christmas Gospel, and found again in the collect for Saint John the Evangelist's Day.

The use of 'visit' in the Advent collect and 'visitation' in Cranmer's Advent III collect also echoes the Benedictus at Matins, in which the term explicitly has reference to the Incarnation:

Through the tender mercy of our God : whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us ...

That the Advent collect describes the "great humility" of the Incarnation, must surely bring to mind the nature of the Lord's Nativity:

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

To pray the Advent collect, then, is to anticipate Christmas.

There is another aspect of the Advent collect that requires consideration as an anticipation of Christmas - the phrase "now in the time of this mortal life". This phrase applies both to the preceding call to repentance and to the subsequent anticipation of the Lord's Nativity. What is more, the 1662 revision of the collect and proper preface for Christmas, in which "this day" became "this time", and "born as this day for us" became "born as at this time for us", deepens this resonance. Having prayed, morning and evening throughout Advent, "now in the time of this mortal life", the phrase is significantly echoed at the celebration of the Nativity, "as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin", "born as at this time for us".

It is clear, therefore, that there is an anticipation of Christmas in the collect Cranmer composed for the season and for the week falling in the midst of Advent. The idea of somehow preserving the purity of Advent from any liturgical reference to Christmas is deeply unCranmerian. The great Advent collect, day by day throughout the season, proclaims that we are approaching the celebration of the Lord's Nativity, with the 1662 revision of the Christmas propers deepening our awareness of this. Cranmer's quite beautiful Advent III collect (restored, by the way, in BCP 2004 as a collect for Advent IV) is a prayer of preparation for Christmas. Liturgical observance of Advent must not, of course, be entirely overtaken by the approach of Christmas. This, however, does not require quite silly notions that Christmas decorations must be banished until Christmas Eve: drawing close to the celebration of the Nativity must surely be a joyful time. As for any notion that reference to Christmas should be expelled from Advent, this, thankfully, is refuted by the glorious words of Cranmer. Anticipating the Nativity of the Lord is, at least for Anglicans, inherent to the season of Advent.

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