No less than the Anchoress pulled forward this money quote from the last great pontiff of happy memory, one that I have seen before, but I love it all over again:
“‘Advent’ does not mean ‘expectation,’ as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word parousia, which means ‘presence’ or, more accurately, ‘arrival,’ i.e. the beginning of a presence. In antiquity, the word was a technical term for the presence of a king or ruler and also of the god being worshiped, who bestows his parousia upon his devotees for a time. ‘Advent,’ then, means a presence begun, the presence being that of God.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, Dogma and Preaching
Go on and read the rest of her brilliant summary of Why Liturgy.
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Anthony Esolen sees the etymology through to completion: Advent is both a coming and a going AND a right-now, at once. Advent is what we should feel at every sacrament in which we paratake and the state we dwell in for our entire lives, the state we have always dwelt within as a People of God.
https://anthonyesolen.substack.com/p/advent
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