A Carthusian View of Advent: Back to the Future

In our liturgical books, the liturgical year begins with Advent: but Advent itself begins with a week which evokes the glorious return of the Lord, the culmination of the whole history of salvaton.  We begin therefore with the end! ...we must know where we are going in order to know how to set about getting there.  And it is clear that the whole history of the universe is moving towards the second coming of the Lord, where the final judgement of all people will come to pass, where our present world will come to an end, and the new earth and the new heavens to replace it will unfold; in short, the full actualisation of the Kingdom of God, where God will be all in all.  (A Carthusian, From Advent to Pentecost: Carthusian Novice Conferences, trans. Carmel Brett, London: Darton, Longman and Todd (1999), p. 13.)