What's the Advent Wreath about?

Check out this two-minute video about the history of the Advent Wreath.

Advent at St. Mark, Vienna, VA

Below are some Advent events at St. Mark you may be interested in:

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT: December 2

Advent

• Sunday, December 2: Youth & Family Mass, 6:00pm in the Church
• Friday, December 7: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Vigil Mass; 7:30pm in the Church
• Saturday, December 8: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Masses at 8:00am and 11:00am in the Church.
• Saturday, December 8: Ticket Distribution for 3:45pm AND 6:00pm Christmas Eve Masses; 10:00am in the Activities Center

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT: December 9

• Wednesday, December 12: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mass at 7:30pm in Church; Fiesta in Activities Center afterward
• Saturday, December 15: First Penance celebration, 11:00am in the Church

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT: December 16

• Thursday, December 20: Advent Taize Prayer, 7:30pm in the Chapel; Blessing of the Creche afterward

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT: December 23

• Sunday, December 23: Advent Parish Penance Service, 7:00pm in the Church.

image credit: aharden on flickr

Four Family Advent Ideas

Wondering how you can celebrate Advent in your home? Here are four ideas for your family to use this Advent.

Use an Advent Calendar

A custom, non-chocolate Advent calendar

Advent is a season of waiting in joyful, expectant hope.  An Advent calendar helps pass on this idea by creating a time of day everyone looks forward to because something that's hidden becomes seen.  Many calendars in department stores feature chocolate treats (and everyone looks forward to chocolate treats).  There are even wacky, specialized Advent calendars you can buy, like the Lego calendar, for those with a particular interest.

Another approach is to create your own calendar as a family.  Buy a reusable Advent calendar online or create one yourself using 24 small containers (one for each day from December 2 to Christmas).  Inside the containers, write and place one small activity for your family to do together

Simple Creche

Set Up a Creche
At the manger scene, you can gather each night for prayer. An old, but good, custom is to invite your children to place one piece of straw in the cradle for good deeds they or the family did that day. The more good deeds, the softer the cradle becomes for Jesus. My family has a tradition of placing baby Jesus in the cradle when we come back from Christmas Mass on Christmas Eve.  Do that, or create your own tradition.

Pray with an Advent Wreath

Advent wreath

Light candles corresponding to the candles lit at Mass on Sundays and pray around the wreath each Sunday (here's a guide for praying with the Advent wreath on Sundays) and/or each day during your normal family prayer time.  After you assemble your Advent wreath, say a few words of blessing as a family.  Use the family Advent wreath blessing from Loyola Press or this blessing from our own US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Make a Jesse Tree

Jesse tree in progress

What is a Jesse tree?  The Diocese of Eerie explains:

In the month before Christmas, the church anticipates the coming of Jesus through readings that span from the Old Testament creation story through Jesus’ birth. Jesse, for whom the tree is named, is the first person in the genealogy of Jesus. At the top of this family tree are Mary and Jesus. Depicted in church windows and artwork for hundreds of years, this visual tree of life may even have been a forerunner of today’s Christmas tree.

Simply put, the Jesse tree is sort of like an Advent calendar, except biblical.  It's a way to pray through the stories from the Old Testament to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Jesus.
To create a Jesse tree, you can follow the instructions on the Diocese of Eerie webpage, or from a blog called Catholic Style.  Those links also have instructions for praying with the Jesse tree.

image credits: Patrick Q on flickr; Jose M. Vazquez; usedcarspecialist on flickr; Silly Eagle Books on flickr

What's Advent About?

Advent is the first season in the liturgical year.  It's meant to help us focus on Jesus' coming.  It's a season of waiting, preparing, hope, praying, and joy.  Watch this two-minute video for more information:

Advent Brings Christmas Into Focus

Advent brings Christmas into focus

As November transitions into December, we transition liturgically from Ordinary Time to Advent.  Green vestments will be exchanged for violet and rose (AKA pink), the music we sing in Church will take on a different hue, and our liturgical readings change to stories of waiting and preparing for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Advent brings Christmas into focus.  The season can help us prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Jesus.  It comes at a perfect time of the year.  As we're pulled in twenty different directions (shopping, decorating, parties, gift exchanges, baking special treats, making sure everything is "perfect"), we need the still, quiet time to even out and focus on why we're running around and why we're so busy: celebrating the birth of Jesus.

To help you and your family prepare for Advent and Christmas you'll find a series of blog posts created this week and throughout the month of December.

May God be with all of us as we start the Advent season!

image credit: vandinglewop on flickr