An Advent Lament: Pandemics Hold a Mirror to the Church

In the Christian liturgical calendar, the weeks leading up to Christmas, when Advent is observed, are meant to be a season of anticipation. A stanza in the carol "O Holy Night," often sung during Christmas Eve Mass, conveys an intense longing for the Savior's arrival: "A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices / For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn." That sense of weighty expectation feels heightened this year, as a fragile, disputatious America prepares for an enormous mobilization to manufacture and distribute hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to finally bring the pandemic under control. The passage in the Book of Common Prayer for the fourth Sunday in Advent reads as a collective yearning: "O Lord, raise up (we pray thee) thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us."