Did You Know? The Meaning of the Advent Season

November 27, 2019

Many people may know that the Advent season focuses on expectation and think that it serves as an anticipation of Christ’s birth in the season leading up to Christmas. This is part of the story, but there’s more to Advent.

The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming,” which is a translation of the Greek word parousia. Scholars believe that during the 4^th and 5^th centuries in Spain and Gaul, Advent was a season of preparation for the baptism of new Christians at the January feast of Epiphany, the celebration of God’s incarnation represented by the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus, his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, and his first miracle at Cana. During this season of preparation, early Christians would spend 40 days in penance, prayer, and fasting to prepare for this celebration; originally, there was little connection between Advent and Christmas.

By the 6^th century, however, Roman Christians had tied Advent to the coming of Christ. But the “coming” they had in mind was not Christ’s first coming in the manger in Bethlehem, but his second coming in the clouds as the judge of the world. It was not until the Middle Ages that the Advent season was explicitly linked to Christ’s first coming at Christmas. More on the “anticipation” part of modern Advent practices in a future Did You Know segment.

“Did You Know?” is a mostly regular feature in upbeat in which dimensions of Catholic practices of faith are unpacked. If you have a question, please contact Fr. Jim Gallagher (gallaghe@up.edu) or Karen Eifler (eifler@up.edu).

James Peña, residence life, was honored with the 2020 New Professional Award from the Northwest Association of College and University Housing Officers. The award celebrates James’ contributions to Residence Life, the campus community, and the student affairs/residence life profession outside of UP.

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Martin Cenek, Shiley School of Engineering, had his article, “‘One Size Does Not Fit All’: A Roadmap of Purpose-Driven Mixed-Method Pathways for Sensitivity Analysis of Agent-Based Models” (with coauthors Arika Ligmann-Zielinska, Peer-Olaf Siebers, Nick Maglioccia, Dawn Parker, Volker Grimm, Eric Jing Du, Nazia Arbab, Uta Berger, Rajiv Paudel, Derek Robinson, Piotr Jankowski, Li An, Xinyue Ye, and student coauthor Viktoriia Radchuk) published in Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 23 (1) 6. January 2020.

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Christina Ivler, Shiley School of Engineering, had her presentation, “Development and Simulation of Damage Tolerant Control Laws for a Compound Helicopter,” (with Joe Horn, Eric Johnson) published in Proceedings of the AIAA SciTech Conference, Orlando, FL, January 2020. She presented “Development and Flight Validation of Unmanned Aerial System Handling Qualities Requirements for Multicopters” (with Declan Kerwin, Kevin Truong, Joel Otomize) at the same conference.

Simon Aihiokhai, theology, presented “Solitude, Identity, and Vocation” at the University of Portland’s spring semester retreat for resident assistants on January 9, 2020. He presented “Christian Identity as an Invitation to Become the Medium of God’s Life in the World: In Memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” a reflection given at the 2020 MLK Celebration Mass at Saint Andrew Parish, Northeast Portland, OR, on January 12, 2020.

Matthew Kuhn, Shiley School of Engineering, had his article, “Linear-frictional contact model for 3D discrete element simulations of granular systems” (with coauthors Ali Daouadji, Kiichi Suzuki) published in International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2020, volume 121, No. 3, pp. 560-569. DOI 10.1002/nme.6216 (February 2020).

Aziz Inan, Shiley School of Engineering, had his piece, “My View: Franklin’s life a nice piece of Pi,” published in the January 17, 2020 edition of the Portland Tribune. See the article using this link.

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