HAVPCD247 – An Advent Procession
HAVPCD247 – An Advent Procession ‘The people that walked in darkness’
The great Christmas Carol Service has become so popular and widespread that it throws out a great blaze of light over the darkest weeks of the year that lead up to the celebration of the Incarnation. But amongst the festivity and joy it is easy to lose the darker message of those days: that Christ came into the world but the world did not receive him. There is an ambiguity in the season of Advent which is caught by the Authorized Version of St John’s Gospel: ‘and the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not’. The Greek verb has two meanings: the darkness did not understand the light; but neither did it overcome it. The story of the waxing and waning of light finds its beginning in Advent, and in the Advent Procession which celebrates it.
