The Second Light: The Wild Peace of Advent
There is a peculiar madness in speaking of peace during Advent. Here we are, in the midst of what the modern world calls "the holiday season" - that frantic period of purchasing and preparing, of rushing and wrapping, of parties and programs - and the Church, with either divine wisdom or divine humor (and possibly both), lights a candle and speaks of peace. It is rather like suggesting a quiet nap in the middle of a circus, or reading poetry in the midst of a parade.
But this apparent contradiction points us toward a deeper truth, one that our ancestors understood better than we do. The peace of which Advent speaks is not the mere absence of noise, but the presence of something far more wild and wonderful. It is not the peace of empty rooms and silent streets, but the peace that was somehow present even in a crowded stable on a chaotic night in Bethlehem.
The modern world, which gets almost everything wrong with an almost perfect precision, believes that peace is a sort of emptiness. It imagines that if we could simply empty ourselves of all our troubles and empty our schedules of all our tasks, we would find peace. But this is rather like saying that the best way to resolve an argument is to remove all the people involved. It achieves a sort of peace, but only by destroying the very thing that makes peace worth having.
Consider how we light the second Advent candle. We do not extinguish the first to light the second. Instead, we add light to light, creating not less activity but more. This is the first clue that we are dealing with a different kind of peace altogether. The peace of Advent does not subtract; it adds. It does not empty; it fills. It is not the peace of the desert, but the peace of the garden.
The old prophets understood this better than our modern peace-seekers. When Isaiah spoke of the coming peace, he described it not as a great quiet, but as a great transformation - wolves living with lambs, leopards lying down with goats, children playing near snake holes. This is not the peace of absence but the peace of right relationship, not the peace of emptiness but the peace of everything finally being in its proper place.
And here we stumble upon the great secret of Advent peace: it is not peaceful at all, by our usual standards. It comes not through the elimination of conflict but through the introduction of something - or Someone - powerful enough to make our conflicts seem suddenly small. It is the peace of a child falling asleep during a thunderstorm, not because the storm has ceased, but because his father is in the room.
This explains why the announcement of this peace, when it came, was made by an army of angels - a choice that might seem rather contradictory until we realize that true peace has always been a thing of power. The angels did not whisper their message but shouted it, and the shepherds who heard it did not sit down to meditate but ran with all haste to Bethlehem. Peace, it seems, can be quite an energetic thing.
This is the peace we celebrate with our second candle, and it is nothing like the peace the world imagines. It is not the peace of empty churches but of crowded mangers, not the peace of silent nights only but of angels singing at the top of their lungs. It is the peace that can exist in the middle of chaos, the tranquility that comes not from the absence of conflict but from the presence of God.
Perhaps this is why we need Advent so desperately. We have convinced ourselves that peace is something we can achieve through better planning or more efficient scheduling or improved time management. We have turned peace into a project, another item on our endless to-do lists. But the peace of Advent arrives not as an achievement but as a gift, not as something we create but as Someone who creates us anew.
As we light this second candle, we are not seeking the peace of empty spaces but the peace that filled a crowded stable. We are not looking for silence but for a song, not for the absence of conflict but for the presence of Christ. It is a peace that does not make sense by our normal standards, but then, neither does a virgin birth or shepherds becoming theologians or God becoming a baby.
And that, perhaps, is the point. The peace of Advent, like the child in the manger, comes not to meet our expectations but to transform them. It arrives not to empty our lives but to fill them, not to end all activity but to give all activity meaning. It is the peace that passes understanding, which means it is the peace that makes sense only when we stop trying to make sense of it and simply welcome it, like shepherds welcoming a baby king.
-The Seeker's Quill
