As we move through the Advent season (this past Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent), our thoughts turn often to memory.  We think about Christmases past and the joy they gave us; we think about those with whom we enjoyed those  Christmases but who are no longer with us; we think about things as they were, we think about things as they now are.  We ponder the present moment.
     Advent is a work of memory.  It remembers millennia of divine promise, it recalls centuries of messianic prophecy.  And it centers and fulfills them in the present time. Advent brings time and memory together.  It does what Gary Schmidt and Susan Felcher, compilers of Winter:  A Spiritual Autobiography, say of memory that, "memory can preserve in a very real way those things that have disappeared."
     Though this seems obvious, in the light of Advent, it's worth thinking about at length. When we consider how Advent culminated and fulfilled hundreds and hundreds of years of memory, hundreds and hundreds of years of preserving those things that "have disappeared," we see that it in fact validates everything about how we remember.  It tells that we can remember with hope, and we can remember with faith.  Advent reminds us that we can believe in the worth of the past, and that this worth portends goodness for the future.
     Advent says to us that what has disappeared hasn't disappeared at all.  In the person of Jesus, the point of Advent, it is here, completely and wonderfully present and new.