Latin ad-venio, to come to According to present usage (note:
written in 1907), Advent is a period beginning with the Sunday
nearest to the feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle (30 November)
and embracing four Sundays. The first Sunday may be as early as
27 November, and then Advent has twenty-eight days, or as late
as 3 December, giving the season only twenty-one days. With
Advent the ecclesiastical year begins in the Western churches.
During this time the faithful are admonished to prepare
themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s
coming into the world as the incarnate God of love, thus to make
their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy
Communion and through grace, and thereby to make themselves
ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of
the world. To attain this object the Church has arranged the
Liturgy for this season. In the official prayer, the Breviary,
she calls upon her ministers, in the Invitatory for Matins, to
adore “the Lord the King that is