We are in the midst of the season of Advent, the beginning of the church’s liturgical year. Advent is a time of waiting, of anticipation, of hope. These days offer us an opportunity to pause before the joy and merriment of the Christmas season, look back at events of the past year, and take stock of where we currently stand. For us at the CCCG, this Advent feels like an especially important one, as much of the past semester’s programming has itself centered around ‘taking stock’ of things.
Thus, we are fortunate enough to have this Advent act as a sort of culmination, a crowning, of the work of the past semester. In it, we have taken stock of both the Notre Dame community and the country as a whole. Taking stock of the university, the central event of a CCCG “alumni and friends” weekend in September was a panel of three distinguished Notre Dame professors who shared their thoughts on how Notre Dame’s campus culture has evolved over the years.
Many of our public lectures also explored the state of things in our country. When we hosted Professor John Witte for our True Lectures, we heard about the state of religious liberty in America and saw current Supreme Court holdings compared with our founders’ understanding of this right. Later in the semester, we also hosted Professor Charles Kesler who explored our founders’ understanding of natural and political rights more broadly. As we approached this year’s election, we moderated a discussion on the current state of the presidency, spotlighting the many legal cases facing President-elect Donald Trump. At our 2024 Jeanie Poole O’Shaughnessy Lecture, we listened to sitting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speak on the current state of conservatism in America in the immediate wake of the election results. Lastly, we heard about the crucial link between free speech and the health of scientific investigation from the incoming NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya.
As this brief recap shows, much of the past semester has been devoted to examining our past and present situations, both on our campus and in our country as a whole. Being equipped with knowledge of our past and present, it is only natural to ask the question, “What next?” This, fittingly, is also the question of Advent.
Since we have the privilege of knowing, in a sense, what is to come at Christmas, the time of Advent serves us as a time of preparation. For all Christians, this means a time of interior preparation. We practice gratitude for God’s blessings in our lives and repent of the ways in which we fall short of relationship with Him. This personal preparation is ultimately all done for one purpose—to prepare for Christ’s coming to Earth and becoming man, the most radical of encounters with the divine.
As Thomas Aquinas argues, since the nature of God is goodness and it belongs to goodness to communicate itself to others, “It belongs to the essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature” (Summa Theologiae III:1). This “highest manner” is the incarnation—Christ becoming man and taking up a body and soul akin to God’s creation. This is what Advent looks forward to: the highest possible communication of goodness.
In many ways, the CCCG exists to reflect and perpetuate the very same communication of goodness. So much of what our programming aims to accomplish is precisely that: the sharing of truth and goodness, primarily in the realm of political thought, with the students and community of Notre Dame. We are in the business of applying Catholic intellectual principles to a civic education and cultivating good and thoughtful citizens.
Above all, good and thoughtful citizens ought to be formed by goodness itself. This formation is aided by time spent in reflection, for it is only by pausing to take stock of things that one is adequately prepared to see the goodness which is to come. Thanks to our many events this semester that offered a chance to pause and take stock of things, we are better prepared to see the good on campus, in our country, and beyond. This Advent, we are grateful for our Notre Dame community and the ways in which we are able to participate in Christ’s mission of sharing goodness.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined. (Is. 9:2)
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