Monday, December 2 — Advent Small Group: Christ’s Nativity in Art and Literature
6:00-7:15 p.m. on Zoom.

Led by Wendy Furman-Adams, this group will meet on four Monday evenings, December 2, 9, 16, and 23. Register online here.

“When the Maker of time, the Word of the Father, was made flesh, he gave us his birthday in time; and he without whose divine bidding no day runs its course, in his Incarnation reserved one day for himself. He himself with the Father precedes all spans of time; but on this day, issuing from his mother, he stepped into the tide of the years.”
(Augustine of Hippo, 354-430)

These words, preached in the 5th century, sound strange to 21st-century ears. Yet poets and artists have continually pondered the strangeness of this central mystery of our Christian faith: that the very Word who creates the world chooses to enter that world as a shivering, speechless infant–to live and die as one of the “least” of us. Over the four weeks of Advent, this small group will explore the mysteries of Christ’s Incarnation in poetry, prose, and the visual arts: the humble young woman whose humility leads to her exaltation; the Infant who pleads for humanity before he has learned to speak; the shepherds and magi transformed by their encounter with the infant God. We will enter into the mystery of kairos time, by which Christ is repeatedly born–Hodie (this day)–in the eucharistic celebration of his birth. For these artists and poets, the strangeness of the scene overcomes all estrangement, bringing each of us into an intimate conversation with Christ himself.

For more information, email Amanda McCormick at amccormick@allsaints-pas.org.