Introducing our 2024 Advent Audio Retreat

Look out for Episode 1: Longing and Hope, read by Simon Stocks, on Sunday 1st December.

Advent as arrival or approach

We get the seasonal name, Advent, from the Latin adventus, which means an ‘arrival’ or an ‘approach’, the event of somebody ‘turning up’. Adventus can also mean an invasion, an arrival that sweeps away resistance and changes everything. For Christians, the arrival anticipated during the four weeks of Advent is that of Jesus, the birth of the ‘Word made flesh’, celebrated at Christmas. A silent invasion in the middle of the decidedly imperial business of taking a census, counting the stock of a subject people and marshalling resources for rule and war.

The verbal sense of adventus here, the ‘arriving’ or ‘approaching’, is important. Here it begins: the slow and stealthy transformation of the world by the foolishness of God, the history in which God repays evil with good, forms us into those who overcome hatred with love and destruction with determined, patient, humble and resilient care. This, of course, is the business of following Jesus, of discipleship.

God’s new beginning

Advent, then, looks forward to the birth of God’s new beginning. The Advent expectation, though, has a double focus, expecting the beginning and hoping for the fulfilment, the final glorification of creation, when “God will be all in all.” We’ve tried to capture something of this double-focus in our online retreat for Advent.

We look towards the ‘New Jerusalem’ when thinking about what God creates in the world: hope, faith, love and peace. These are the virtues in and from which God makes creation’s future and fulfils the world in the giving of his perfections. At the same time, we attend to the way we still live in the beginning, and receive these gifts in troubled lives, especially today in a world threatened by global warming and the accelerating extinction of species.

God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, bringing hope and faith, love and peace. How, then, should we now turn our hands to work in God’s renewal of creation?

The episodes

St Augustine’s staff offer some reflections over the four Sundays of Advent, helping us pray and prepare for the adventus that is Christmas.

Episode 1: Longing and Hope, with Simon Stocks

Episode 2: Fear and Faith, with Guido de Graaf

Episode 3: Fury and Love, with Alan Gregory

Episode 4: Vulnerability and Peace, with Jenny Corcoran

How to listen to the Advent Audio Retreat

If you’re signed up to our newsletter, you’ll receive an email every Sunday during Advent with everything you need to listen along to each episode. To ensure you receive the episodes straight to your inbox, sign up to our newsletter.

Every week, we’ll also upload the latest episode to our website under our news section. 

You can listen via our St Augustine’s College of Theology YouTube channel or via the YouTube player link, which you’ll find in our news section and emails.

In the meantime, feel free to explore our previous audio retreats. Just click below to browse our complete catalogue or listen to a specific episode.