10 Ways to Navigate Advent This Year

With Advent now here, there are several ways you can prepare your heart, mind, and soul for the coming of the Christ Child! While Advent is often a time of joyfully awaiting His coming, it is also in a way similar to Lent, when we somberly and penitently await Christ’s Resurrection.

 “Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayers and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time.” ~Edward Hays

That being said, here are some ideas of how you can both joyfully and penitently await the birth of Our Savior:

1) Give up something during the four weeks, just like during Lent. It doesn’t have to be anything huge. Maybe you could give up snacking in-between meals, caffeine, or sleeping with a pillow.
2) Try doing a small act of love or service either every day or every week. This can be as simple as sending someone a card, doing a chore for a sibling, making a meal for your family, donating something out of your closet, or giving out hand/foot warmers to the homeless. There are so many small things you can do for others out of great love!
3) Pray St. Andrew’s Christmas Novena, which starts November 30th. The following prayer is said 15 times every day (to read VOX’s full article on the St. Andrew Novena, click here):

St. Andrew Christmas Novena
Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born Of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

4) Read an Advent devotional every day. There are several Catholic ones that can be found online.
5) Do lectio divina for the readings of the four Sundays of Advent. (You could use this link.)
6) If you are unable to go to daily Mass, read the daily readings.
7) Listen to podcasts. (Fr. Mike Schmitz has some great talks! As do other priests and religious.)
8) Pray part of the Liturgy of the Hours; maybe Morning Prayer or Night Prayer, or even both!
9) Advent Angels—whether with friends or family, draw names and pray for that person/do small acts of kindness for them throughout Advent.
10) Learn about a new Saint every week.

 I hope this list gives you some ideas of what you can do to prepare for Christ’s coming! I hope you all have a very blessed Advent and Merry Christmas!