Your answers
Is Advent still a fast? If so, to what
extent?
Several church customs suggest that Advent is a "double" of
Lent, albeit of shorter duration. The absence of flowers in the
sanctuary, the purple/violet altar frontal and vestments, and the
direction that the Te Deum and Gloria in Excelsis are not normally
used in Advent and Lent, and may be omitted, raise this question
whether the season is still a fast.
Official Anglican formularies provide a definitive answer,
because in neither the 1662 Book of Common Prayer table of Days of
Fasting, or Abstinence, nor the Common Worship Days of
Discipline and Self-Denial is Advent included. The Lenten features
seem to be survivals of ascetic Advent observances in fifth-century
Gaul and Spain, or, a possible connection with the "Fast of the
tenth month" (jejuniam x mensis).
In the Western Church, a strict and universal severity of Advent
fasting was never maintained, and sporadic attempts to reassert its
practice failed to obliterate joyful expectancy. This is
illustrated in the 12th-century Ordo Romanus
(c.1140), in which Advent is regarded as a festal season,
when the Pope celebrated mass in white vestments and sang Gloria in
Excelsis. Radical changes came later in 1290, when in Ordo
Romanus XIV the Gloria was omitted and purple vestments were
worn - a reproduction of Lenten use, except that the Alleluia,
invariably omitted in Lent, still persists in Advent as a reminder
of its essentially joyous character.
Advent always has been a complex mixture of pieties: penitential
preparedness for Christ's coming in judgement, and joyful waiting.
Above all, it re-echoes the longing prayer of the earliest
Christians: "Maranatha": "Our Lord come!" (1 Corinthians
16.22). The analogy with Lent must, therefore, not be overdrawn:
the theme of joy is clearly reflected in modern liturgies, e.g. in
Common Worship eucharistic proper prefaces that pray that
"we may with joy behold his appearing," and "in his love Christ
fills us with joy, as we prepare to celebrate his birth."
(Canon) Terry Palmer Magor,
Monmouthshire
In the Orthodox Church, Advent is, indeed, still a fast. Indeed,
it has never stopped being so. Weekdays are observed according to
the standard Lenten rules. No animal products, wine, or oil are
eaten. Fish is permitted on Saturdays, Sundays, and certain major
feasts, such as the Entrance of the Mother of God into the
Temple.
R. C. Beavis, Bristol
Your questions
How does the practice of bowing at the mention of our
Lord Jesus Christ during, for example, the creed, match the belief
in the equal status of the three Persons of the
Trinity?
J. P.
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