Pray With Your Feet

Get in loser, we’re fasting for advent

It’s sunset. We enter through the side door, our steps disrupt the stillness of the empty church. Our echoes compete with the silence that fills the space. Rays of light dance through the sacristy windows before surrendering to the liminality of twilight. It’s one of my favorite nights of the year, the Vigil of the Nativity. We’ve arrived early to prepare. My mother begins assembling votive candles with us before stepping away to find the appropriate vestments. Others join us and prepare the altar for the seasonal transition. Adults around us only exchange a few words, careful not to break their focus. Still, time escapes us. The deep hum of the organ fills the church, indicating the arrival of parishioners. After a few minutes we join them. The Frankincense filled air is rich with reverence. We’ve been awaiting this night, the birth of Jesus, the joy of Christmas.

As Christians, the season of Advent is intended to serve as a time of preparation for the birth of Christ; the coming of our messiah. The Jewish people, from whom our tradition stems, have long awaited the messiah¹. Our Old Testament is filled with Jewish psalms of lament and prayers for divine intervention and justice. Jewish oppression created conditions for a rich revolutionary history, in which many messianic figures arose to embody their faith through resistance. One such figure was Jesus of Nazareth, a Palestinian Jewish political prisoner. His apocalyptic preaching about the fall of the Roman Empire and establishment of the kingdom of heaven resonated with many. As we know, the threat the Jesus movement posed led to his capture and execution by the state. We believe that Jesus’ radical sacrifice liberates us from death. His teachings also release us from the misconception that we belong to the world that we’ve created. They affirm that we exist to be free to love and serve God and one another. For us, Advent is a season of readying our hopeful hearts to receive God’s will for our lives. We pray “on earth as it is in heaven” and this season reminds us that, like Christ, we each have a role in the struggle to form a loving and just world.

Fasting is one way of preparing during Advent. A gift of the ascetic tradition, fasting is an invitation to consume less and more mindfully. When we fast, we are forced to focus inward, no longer distracted by our vices. Growing up, my mother explored the many types of fasting with us so we could observe Lent. She emphasized that the challenge reminds us of our humanity and leads us to rely on God, not ourselves, for the strength to overcome our obstacles. My heart is heavy as I prepare to fast this year. Awareness of the mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and genocide taking place in Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Tigray and many other places has been a tremendous test of my faith. Accepting my inability to enact immediate change, I’ve chosen to surrender my anger to God.

When I initially felt called to share about Advent, God reminded me of one of my favorite quotes by Frederick Douglass, “I prayed for freedom for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” Douglass’ words always feel like a salve for my faithlessness. Hope is a practice, a discipline. Embodying hope is required of us, as people of faith, if we are going to support in forming a world free from injustice. In order to live into this truth, my fast will include continuing to boycott the imperialist powers that sustain global oppression. Boycotting is one way we can begin to address the sins of imperialism and colonialism that we’ve internalized as citizens of the Western world. Until we do so, we are complicit in the violence enacted against others. Our distant thoughts and prayers will never be enough to put an end to injustice, God expects us to pray with our feet.

1. Beck, R. Messianism and Apocalypticism in Jewish Thought. Nov 2023.