The startling contrast between the novus ordo and the TLM during Advent

No other season of the year highlights more vividly the stark differences between the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite than the season of Advent. Indeed, the differences are so startling, that one could almost conclude that during this season those who are attending the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite are practicing an entirely different Christian religion than those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass.

In the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite there is a sense of preparation for the coming feast of Christmas that dominates everything. Attention is focused on the first coming or Advent of Christ, the coming in the flesh that has since long happened in its appointed time. The collects in the Ordinary Form emphasis, to almost Palagian degree, how the Christian goes to meet the Lord in His coming in the flesh, commemorated at Christmas. Advent has, in many parishes, lost its penitential dimension, and has simply become another festive season in anticipation of an even more festive season. Such an attitude has done much to diminish and denude the meaning of both liturgical seasons.

On the other hand, the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite emphasizes the threefold coming of Christ: His coming in the flesh; His coming into the hearts and minds of men today, a coming that makes Christmas more than just a commemoration, but a feast that enlivens Christ in His Church; and lastly, His coming in glory as Judge at the end of time. Completely absent in the Ordinary Form is, especially, any reference to this third and last Advent. Because of its emphasis on the threefold Advent of Christ, the liturgical season of Advent in the context of the Traditional Latin Mass has retained the beauty of its uniquely penitential character.

Consideration of this threefold Advent of Christ is potent food for mediation during this season, that can bear much fruit for the traditional Catholic and the Church. It is a remedy to the prevalent lack of mysticism inherent in the novus ordo liturgy, a lack of mysticism that has helped to trivialize the season of Advent in the Church and in the world. When we are bombarded by "Christmas in November", and when Christmas is thrown aside on the morning of December 26th (and sometimes even sooner), the traditional Catholic has in the Traditional Latin Mass an opportunity to rediscover and present anew to the Church the worth and beauty of this deeply prayerful and invigorating season.

This unique and mystical character is explained by Dom Guéranger.

From
The Liturgical Year: Advent, vol 1
by Dom Guéranger, O.S.B

This mystery of the coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple, for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold, because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.

"In the first coming," says St. Bernard, "He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third."

This, then, is the mystery of Advent. let us now listen to the explanation of this threefold vist of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in this third Sermon de Adventu: "There are three comings of our Lord; the first in the flesh, the second in the soul, the third at the judgment. The first was at midnight, according to those words of the Gospel: At midnight there was a cry made, Lo the Bridegroom cometh! But this first coming is long since past, for Christ has been seen in the earth and has conversed among men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love HIm, he will come unot us and will take up His abode with us. So that this second coming is full of uncertainty to us; for who, save the Spirit of God, knows them that are of God? They that are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things, know indeed when He comes; but whence He cometh, or wither He goeth, they know not. As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will be, most uncertain when it will be; for nothing is more sure than death, and nothing less sure than the hour of death. When they shall say, peace and security, says the apostle, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape. So that the first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible."

The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardour the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins here own supplications. These longings for the Messias expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they hae a reality and efficacy of their own, an influnece in the great act of God's munificence, whereby He have us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after receiving and granting them, that He sent, the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon earth, which made it bud forth the Saviour.

The Church aspires also to the second coming, the consequence of the first, which consists, as we have just seen, in the visit of the Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes place, each year, at the feast of Christmas, when the new birth of the Son of God delivers the faithful from that yoke of bondage, under which the enemy would oppress them. The Church, therefore, during Advent, prays that she may be visited by Him who is her Head and her Spouse; visited in her hierarchy; visited in her members, of whom some are living, and some are dead, but may come to life again; visited, lastly, in those who are not in communion with her, and even in the very infidels, that they may be converted to the true light, which shines even for them.

But this annual visit of the Spouse does not content the Church; she aspires after a third coming, which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. She has caught up the last words of her Spouse, "Surely I am coming quickly"; and she cries out to Him, "Ah! Lord Jesus! Come!"

She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse. He desires, expressed by her Advent liturgy, go even as far as this; and here we have the explanation of these words of the beloved disciple in prophesy: "The nuptials of the Lamb are come, and His wife hath prepared herself."

But the day of this His last coming to her will be a day of terror. The Church frequently trembles at the very thought of that awful judgment, in which all mankind is to be tried. She calls it "a day of wrath, on which, as David and the Sibyl have foretold, the world will be reduced to ashes; a day of weeping and of fear." Not that she fears for herself, since she knows that this day will for ever secure for her the crown, as being the bride of Jesus; but her maternal heart is troubled at the thought that, on the same day, so many of her children will be on the left hand of the Judge, and, having no share with the elect, will be bound hand and foot, and cast into the darkness, where there shall be everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent, so frequently speaks of the coming of Christ as a terrible coming, and selects from the Scriptures those passages which are most calculated to awaken a salutary fear in the mind of such of her children as may be sleeping in the sleep of sin.