By David G. Bonagura, Jr.
A turning point is an event that inaugurates a substantial change, like the battles of Saratoga and Gettysburg or the surprise play “Philly Special” by the Eagles in Super Bowl LII. The change is decisive: the future takes an unexpected course that would not have happened otherwise. Its synonyms—climax, milestone, watershed—lack the essential element of initiating something new that might not have been.
With Advent we prepare for the greatest turning point the universe has ever seen: the Incarnation of the Son of God. The world was languishing in sin, without hope, without prospects of renewal. “All things are wearisome,” laments the Book of Ecclesiastes. “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (1:8-9).
The birth of Christ altered human history forever. There is no longer politics without an end. There is no longer suffering without meaning. There is no longer death without the prospect of a greater life to come.
“Now we know the way that human beings must take in this world,” wrote Pope Benedict XVI in the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth. “Jesus has brought God and, with God, the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and charity. Only because of the hardness of our heart do we think this is little.”
We cannot recognize a turning point until we see the endpoint, which allows us to evaluate the past from a new perspective. Advent helps us prepare for the turning point of the universe by beginning with the endpoint: the second coming of Christ. Because He will come again in triumph to judge the living and the dead, we know that His first Advent changed the course of history forever. The Anointed One of God, destined to reign in heaven and on earth with splendor, is born in Bethlehem so that we may have life and have it abundantly.
In Christ we know that evil does not have the last word—although, unfortunately, it still has much to say. From the wood of the manger to the wood of the Cross, He shows us the way. “If you follow the will of God,” Benedict continues, “you know that, despite all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a definitive refuge.” Jesus is Emmanuel: God with us, in good times and bad, even when suffering wants to tear us apart.
The Western calendar places the turning point of the universe at its center. The years of antiquity are counted backward to His Advent—the time “before Christ.” A new era dawned with His birth—the years of the Lord, anni Domini—and time is now counted forward. The years will cease when the second Advent bursts forth.
Turning points, however, are a matter of interpretation. Where the Christian sees the reconstitution of creation in Christ, the unbeliever sees nothing. As these unbelievers have gained power in the West, they have imposed their blindness on the calendar: instead of distinguishing the years “B.C./A.D.,” they insist on “BCE/CE,” that is, “Before the Common Era” and “Common Era,” counting the years the same way, but with meaningless labels.
And they are: there is nothing that distinguishes the year 1 BCE from 1 CE. Nothing happened to make the second one “common.” For an unbeliever, those years are as common as the previous and subsequent ones. In reality, the BCE/CE system is a modern recreation of Ecclesiastes: without Christ, there is nothing new under the sun.
It is tempting to think that turning points from “another game” do not affect us. Consider Saratoga and Gettysburg: we are nearly 250 and 160 years distant, respectively, but the life of our nation—and, consequently, our own lives—was irreversibly altered by the victories that made those battles possible. Even the Super Bowl changed fortunes, both financial and personal. This is even more true for the Incarnation, whose consequences transformed every sphere of the world: from law and government to education, family life, leisure, and works of charity.
The Modern Project has tried to find a new turning point in history that is not Christ. Perhaps the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment, or the French Revolution, or the Industrial Revolution, or the Sexual Revolution. Each has produced new gods: individualism, freedom, democracy, money, pleasure.
None of these gods has freed us from the fundamental problem of the world: human sin. Only God has done so. In practice, the measure of this impact has been limited by the hardness of our heart, as Benedict rightly pointed out. That is, sin still exists. But the measure of charity in the world—the love of spouses, of families, of the poor, of orphans, of the elderly—points to the God who transformed the world by dwelling among us.
And He could do even more if we let Him. God’s Advent shows us the way: “Though He was in the form of God, [Christ Jesus] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6-7).
The self-emptying of Christ, His kenosis, in the Incarnation is the turning point of the universe. If we allow the Child in the manger to break our hardened hearts, we can strip ourselves of pride and fill ourselves with His love. Then we can follow Him to our endpoint: the Father’s House.
About the author
David G. Bonagura, Jr. is the author, most recently, of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today, and translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning. Adjunct professor at St. Joseph Seminary and Catholic International University, he is religion editor at The University Bookman, a magazine founded in 1960 by Russell Kirk. His personal website is available here.