An Advent Note on Ikhnaton

by Thomas Howard - December 3, 2007

Reprinted with permission.

One's thoughts don't ordinarily run much to the pharaohs in connection with Advent. Insofar as Egypt might crop up at all, it would seem more fitting to hold it for the Flight into Egypt after the Nativity.

In any case, I received a card this past week from a Discalced Carmelite nun friend of mine. She is an artist and photographer and had made up a sort of collage in which the centerpiece is the painting from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts of the Virgin and Child asleep in the arms of the Sphinx (referring, to be sure, to the Flight into Egypt). In the shadows at the foot of the Sphinx one can descry, fallen, Cleopatra and Ramses and Osiris – pagan Egypt, that is, in ruins. But in the dark sky of the background – immense, haunting, and immensely wistful, it would seem – we find the solemn and magnificent head of Ikhnaton.

Readers will recall that he was the pharaoh who, alone in remote antiquity, was convinced that there must be the One above all the clutter of deities worshipped in Egypt's rites and sacrifices. He went to his grave, as far as we know, unsatisfied. C. S. Lewis poses the question somewhere as to which of us can think of that lonely king without saying a prayer for his soul.

The point is, there was a man whose whole being yearned for the coming of God. He would have given anything to have seen the Face of God. He kept Advent, so to speak. Do we for one moment suppose that he will be denied what he sought?

As it happens, I am writing this column on the Wednesday of the week between the Feast of Christ the King and the First Sunday in Advent. The First Lesson this morning at Mass was about another pagan king. The trouble here is that this king was most certainly not looking for God. He was frolicking in a great debauch. When the handwriting came on the wall, poor Belshazzar's knees knocked and his hip joints gave way.

Here, no doubt, we have two icons for Advent worth pausing over.

The hymns for Advent form one of the season's most salutary aspects, it seems to me. For one thing, there is the sixth-century Latin "Hark, a thrilling voice is sounding." The word "thrilling" is to be taken in both senses of "full of delight," since the news announced is indeed, for those like Ikhnaton and the saints, good news ("Christ is nigh"), and "full of dread," for those like Belshazzar and other distracted types, since the One drawing nigh is, alas, the Judge. The first stanza of this ancient hymn goes on to adjure us, "Cast away the works of darkness,/O ye children of the day." The very theme of the first weeks of Advent.

Then there is St. Ambrose's Veni, Redemptor gentium – "Come, Thou Redeemer of the Earth." How Ikhnaton must have prayed that, or something not altogether unlike that. What note do we strike when we sing it? We know that He has come. Why sing it, then? Here lies the mystery of liturgical time: It transcends mere sequence and chronology. We enter into the region where the eternal touches history and the event (in this case, the coming of the Lord: His second coming, then His nativity – we mark them in that order in Advent, backwards) becomes present. Or, put it the other way around: We are taken into the "present" of the event – the second coming, or the nativity, in the liturgical seasons and festivals.

And finally, among the great treasury of hymns for Advent, one other may be noted, namely the 16th-century "Remember, O Thou man." It is very solemn, indeed, or so it would seem from the first few lines, quite remorseless: "Remember, O thou man,/O thou man, O thou man,/Remember, O thou man,/Thy time is spent. . ."

Not really very suitable sentiments for us 21st-century positive thinkers, surely?

But what is it we will wish to have been reminded of on that Day when Liber scriptus proferetur/In quo totum continetur ("a book will be brought forth, in which everything is contained")? Do we want to start our reflecting just then? Hey nonny!

Advent supplies us with this chance. It is indeed a thrilling season, in all senses. All of our fondest, purest yearnings are to be fulfilled, and we are invited to purify our hearts in order to be ready to receive the Lord from heaven – in His comings as Judge and as the Rose from Jesse's stem.

Thomas Howard is retired from 40 years of teaching English in private schools, college, and seminary in England and America.