Book Review
Franciscan’s book helps Catholics prepare during the Advent season

By Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
December 7, 2006

Local Catholics spiritually preparing themselves during the Advent season now have one more tool at their disposal.

Franciscan Father Alonso de Blas recently published a book of reflections on the readings for all the Masses during Advent.

The slim book, “Readings and Reflections: The Masses of Advent; the Feasts of Christmastide,” offers a comprehensive meditation on Advent and illuminates a season rich in meaning.

When presenting the readings for the day, Fr. de Blas often offers a historical context for the Scripture.

Thankfully, his history never becomes historicism, which can reduce the Scriptures to a mere academic text. Rather, the context he provides sheds light on God’s mysterious use of time to bring about salvation for His people.

For example, the reading from the Prophet Isaiah for Dec. 11 describes the blessings and restoration God will grant the Jews after their captivity.

Fr. de Blas reflects, “God will remedy their physical (and, by extension, their spiritual) ills, making feeble hands strong and weak knees firm. He will open the eyes of the blind, clear the ears of the deaf, and the mute will not just speak, but sing!”

He then moves directly into the Gospel for the day, in which Jesus heals and forgives the sins of a paralyzed man. He shows how Jesus fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy by making the man physically and spiritually whole again.

The Gospel also touches modern readers, as it reminds them of the restorative gift God gives them in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Finally, the readings taken as a whole point to the Second Coming, when physical corruption and sin will truly end.

“Watch Jesus working, and you’ll see the promised glory of the end-time already beginning,” Fr. de Blas writes.

This helpful exegesis reveals a fullness of the readings throughout Advent.

As Fr. de Blas writes in his introduction, Advent means a “coming.” Certainly, the “coming” most associated with the season is the Nativity of Jesus Christ.

“But once Christmas is over,” Fr. de Blas writes, “we can also think pretty naturally of the coming of Christ at the Parousia, the end of time.”

Furthermore, Fr. de Blas reminds his readers that Christ comes to them every day, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist.

Viewed in this light, the season can be a time to focus on all three kinds of “coming”: past, present and future.

By employing this triple-focus in his reflections, Fr. de Blas points his readers to a wholeness of Christian experience.

They look to the past to understand the roots of their faith. They look to the future, to the promise of Christ’s return, and they look to the present, discerning their call to live out Christ’s Gospel.

Fr. de Blas writes in an easy, colloquial style, which has its benefits and disadvantages. On one level, his writing offers accessibility to difficult subjects. At times, however, his jokey references and cute asides distract from the meat of the book.

This is a small complaint though.

Overall, the book reveals the beauty and depths Catholics can find in the readings of Advent. It explores the meaning and mystery contained in the season, where timeliness and timelessness meet.

Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcomed. Send e-mail to letters@catholisun.org.