Advent begins in the dark, but it is not the kind of darkness that terrifies. It is the quiet dark of early morning, the moment before the first thin light begins brushing against the horizon. This year the season arrives not in a sanctuary, not in a carefully prepared liturgy, but in the dim front room of my grandparents’ house, where my grandmother lies resting under the soft weight of hospice blankets. The blinds are half-open, letting in a gray, wintry light. Time feels slower here, suspended in a way I can’t quite describe.
I keep thinking of the 1662 Collect for the First Sunday of Advent, words I have heard for years but never felt in my bones the way I do now:
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life…
The phrase “in this mortal life” catches me. It feels different when spoken beside a fading breath.
Pause I
Advent’s purpose is to teach waiting without illusion. It asks us to acknowledge the world’s dimness without pretending it is deeper than it is. It reminds us that light emerges slowly, almost imperceptibly, and that the heart must learn to be attentive enough to notice it. The season does not demand belief in the metaphysical sense; it asks for readiness—ethical, emotional, existential.
This year, Advent’s call to watchfulness finds its echo in my grandmother’s breathing. Every shift in her chest feels like a new stanza in the season’s liturgy.
A Lesson from the Prophet Isaiah 2:1–5
Later in the afternoon, after getting on work, after the nurse leaves, I sit beside my grandmother and read from Isaiah, not out loud but quietly just for us, letting the words drift through the room like something remembered rather than spoken.
Many people shall go and say,
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD…
and he will teach us of his ways.
The prophet sees peace not as a result but as a direction. People walk toward the mountain before the world is healed. They walk because the faintest glimmer at the summit is enough to move their feet.
I look at my grandmother’s hands. They are soft now, thinner than I remember, resting gently atop the blanket. She is walking too, though she is no longer aware of the path. And we walk with her, guided not by clarity but by presence. Isaiah ends his vision with an invitation:
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
It is a present-tense command: come, walk now. The light may be far, but it is real enough to turn toward.
Pause II
There is something about hospice that sharpens one’s sense of direction. Not in the physical sense—no one is going anywhere—but in the emotional landscape. Every gesture, every whispered memory, every moment of silence takes on the quality of movement. We are walking her home, step by step, breath by breath, with only the faintest illumination guiding us.
Advent feels like the season designed for this kind of journey.
A Reading from Psalm 122
That evening, before dinner, my parents gather in the room. Dad adjusts her pillow. Mom smooths the blanket. They leave and my brother joins me. We sit together, watching her chest rise and fall. The room grows quiet with the intimacy of shared vigil.
The psalmist writes:
I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.
This “house of the LORD” is not simply a structure. It is a place stable enough to hold the weight of human hearts. A place “compact together.”
I realize, sitting here, that the vigil room has become that house. Not because of theology, but because of nearness. Because love is thick in the air.
The psalm continues:
Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
It becomes a whispered prayer for her:
Peace be within these walls. Peace be upon this body. Peace be in this final threshold.
Pause III
Advent peace is not the absence of sorrow. It is the courage to remain together within it. The psalm gives me language I did not know I needed. It teaches me that peace can be architectural, made from bodies gathered closely enough to create a steadying structure around someone they love.
Grandma exhales—a long, slow breath—and I feel the room tighten with attention. This, too, is peace: not serenity, but presence.
A Lesson from the Letter to the Romans 13:11–14
Later, in the quiet hours after dark, I sit alone at her bedside. The world outside is silent. I open to Romans, feeling the familiar urgency rise from the page:
Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep…
Paul’s call is not to theological certainty but to clarity. To awaken to what is real.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
I cannot help hearing those words in the cadence of hospice. The night deepens, yes, but the day is also drawing near. Not a day we can see or map, but a day that belongs to her now, as she moves gently toward whatever waits beyond her final breath.
Paul urges us:
Let us put on the armour of light.
The “armor” is not protection from grief but commitment to presence. It is the resolve to stay awake even when the heart grows heavy.
Pause IV
All week my senses have been sharpened: the soft rhythm of her breath, the slight coldness of her fingers, the way time gathers differently around the dying. Wakefulness becomes a pious discipline, an Advent discipline, and a human discipline.
Remaining awake becomes a way of loving her.
A Lesson from the Gospel of Matthew 24:36–44
Earlier today, the house is especially still. We begin to suspect that things have changed. Though no one can say how close, we gather together. Each of us has grown quiet, patient, and tired. Grandma more than any of us.
Jesus’ words return to me:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man…
Watch therefore…
This watching is not waiting for an event. It is attending to a life. It is refusing to turn away in the final hours, even when the mystery is larger than anything we can hold.
Hospice is full of unknowns. Advent is full of them too. In both, the task is not to predict but to stay within the mystery.
Pause V
Something sacred happens in the overlap between the liturgical threshold of Advent and the threshold my grandmother is crossing. In both, time loosens. The edges between past and present blur. The heart strains toward a light it cannot yet see.
We are keeping watch not to catch the moment, but to honor it.
Coda
As the first week of Advent unfolds, the Scriptures form a pattern that mirrors the vigil itself.
Isaiah teaches us to walk toward a far-off light.
The psalmist teaches us to build peace from presence.
Paul calls us to wakefulness.
Jesus teaches us to watch.
The Collect gathers these threads:
Cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light…
Here, in this quiet room, the darkness has not lifted. But it has become softer. It has become inhabited. And into that inhabited darkness, a single candle burns. A lighthouse in a sea of darkness.
This year Advent has become the vigil.
And the vigil has become the place where I learn how light first emerges from the dark:
slowly, tenderly, almost hidden,
but unmistakably there.