by Fr. Brian Wirth,
Director of Rural Life
One of the biggest misconceptions about farming is that once harvest concludes, farmers are able to sit back, relax, and do less during the winter months. This belief is far from the truth.
While the winter certainly provides a slower pace in comparison to the demands of harvest, there are plenty of jobs that keep farmers and ranchers busy through the winter: applying anhydrous ammonia, fulfilling winter grain contracts, feeding livestock, storing machinery, mechanical repairs, yield analysis, assessing fertilizer/chemical needs, determining what seed varieties to purchase for the upcoming spring.
As my dad commented shortly after wrapping harvest: “Glad it’s finished; time to start preparing for next year.”
He’s not the only one with such sentiment. Recently, I attended the Nebraska Ag Expo at the Lancaster Event Center. This expo is the second-largest indoor farm show in the country. More than 800 total exhibitors were present from 27 states to offer educational resources, field questions, and showcase any/all ag-related products to thousands of farmers and ranchers across Nebraska and the Midwest to help them prepare for the next spring planting and fall harvest.
Thus, regardless of the season, farmers possess a consistent drive for vocational excellence. They seek to learn, remain productive in the present, prudently look ahead toward the future, and regularly reflect on their past work in terms of how they can improve upon their labor in relation to the next harvest.
Spiritually, having a like mentality would serve us well with respect to living out the faith more fully in view of the liturgical seasons. Like meteorological seasons, liturgical seasons are a huge blessing. Each liturgical season possesses its own unique goodness and purposes that seek to unite us more firmly to Christ as One Body.
As such, the liturgical calendar isn’t just simply meant for the Church in general. Rather, the liturgical calendar should gracefully regulate our lives in how we worship, pray, and labor, both publicly and privately. In short, the liturgical calendar teaches a fundamental reality: “Christianity shouldn’t be merely lived. Christianity should be celebrated in everything we do.”
Anytime we end a season and start a new one, this awakens our senses, physically and spiritually. Entering a new liturgical season alerts us to the seasonal tasks at hand, a call to continually love and serve Christ and His Church by a living faith, and corresponding works of charity within the specific season.
Now well within the Advent season, hopefully it has provided us opportunities to “stay awake,” to slow down, reflect on the past year, and seek out the sacraments (penance, Eucharist), silence, prayer, Sacred Scripture, and Eucharistic adoration.
Within the liturgical calendar, Advent and Lent are the primary seasons of spiritual preparation for the comings of Christ: the Incarnation; the Second Coming/Final Judgment; and the spiritual coming to each believer via the Holy Spirit and the sacraments.
Each Advent, we are personally called to prepare for the three comings of Christ, celebrating His Incarnate Birth while also preparing ourselves to receive Him now and at the end of time in Heaven.
While Advent and Lent prepare us for the two greatest mysteries of our faith (Christmas and Easter), we shouldn’t take less seriously the other liturgical seasons, especially Ordinary Time where the temptation may be that there isn’t anything important to “do” and thus we can simply sit back and relax.
To highlight this, one important job farmers do in the winter is record soil temperatures. The purpose of recording soil temperatures is to determine Growing Degree Units (GDUs).
GDUs are a measure of accumulated heat units that correspond with the growth and development of a crop. Farmers keep track of GDUs because the length of a crop’s growing season is often measured as accumulated GDUs. In understanding the potential for accumulating GDUs during the growing season, farmers are better able to determine whether to plant a short season, mid-season, or long season seed variety.
In a way, recording GDUs are an analogy for Advent and the liturgical seasons. During Advent, we have the opportunity to assess the soil temperature of our hearts in relation to our love for Christ. Is the soil of our hearts freezing? Hard as a rock? Lukewarm? Blazing due to anger? Or is it temperate, favorable to produce a bountiful crop of peace, love, and joy? What type of crop is growing within me? Am I giving enough time to Christ for Him to be properly sown and grown within my heart?
As disciples, every day is a spiritual battle where we are called to stay awake and grow in relationship with Christ. The works we perform in Advent and during the liturgical year are meant to serve as a bridge to reap the fruits of Christmas and Easter and to strengthen us to labor lovingly in the vineyard of Ordinary Time.
Out of love brothers and sisters, Christ is the Eternal Seed who has chosen to be cultivated into the soil of our humanity, the seed who is currently taking form in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. As we continue on this Advent journey, may we never take any day for granted.
There is always work to be done in the vineyard. There is no time to sit back and relax. The time to labor is now, to reap the fruit of the Christ Child. May we all lovingly adore Him now and forever. Amen.
“Advent invites us to pause in silence to understand a Presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention He has for each one of us. How often does God give us a glimpse of His Love! To keep, as it were, an ‘interior journal’ of this love would be a beautiful and salutary task for our life!”
- Pope Benedict XVI
