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

Sacred Heart of Jesus

A traditional rendition of the Sacred Heart

Today is the Feast day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus!  We've all seen the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (see image to the right).  As a child, I always thought that must have been painful and, very practically, asked the question, how could Jesus be alive with his heart outside his body?  Now as an adult, I ask a different question: what's the point of the Sacred Heart?

For an answer, let's take a look at an excellent article by Fr. James Martin, SJ, on the Sacred Heart.  It really gets to the heart of this devotion.

For the Sacred Heart is nothing less than an image of the way that Jesus loves us: fully, lavishly, radically, completely, sacrificially. The Sacred Heart invites us to meditate on some of the most important questions in the spiritual life: In what ways did Jesus love his disciples and friends? How did he love strangers and outcasts? How was he able to love his enemies? How did he show his love for humanity? What would it mean to love like Jesus did? What would it mean for me to have a heart like his? How can my heart become more "sacred"? For in the end, the Sacred Heart is about understanding Jesus’s love for us and inviting us to love others as Jesus did.

To emphasize that point, the end of the article tells a story of a priest showing the image to schoolchildren.  The priest asks the students, "why do you think Jesus' heart is shown outside his body?" A girl responds, “because he loves us so much that he can’t keep it in!”


Read the rest of Fr. Martin's article for more information on the history and development of the Sacred Heart devotion. 

Br. Michael Moran's Sacred Heart

Easter Sunday

He is risen!  Death, where is your sting?  Alleluia!

Holy Saturday

On Holy Saturday, the Church keeps vigil, as we wait for and celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord.

"Receive the Light of Christ," we tell one another at the Vigil

Where do I need Christ's light in my life?  Where do I need to shine light in my family, community, and world?


image credit: Lawrence OP on flickr

View from the Cross

For Good Friday, a painting depicting what Jesus saw from the cross called "View from the Cross," by James Tissot.

For a quick synopsis of what you're looking at, read this entry in Art and the Bible.

Where would you be in this picture (be honest)?  Far away, close by, or somewhere in between?

Holy Thursday

To prepare for Holy Thursday's liturgy (Mass of the Lord's Supper), take a look at this video from Fr. Robert Barron's Catholicism series.  In it he talks about the words of Jesus in John 6.



What's my experience of the Eucharist?  Do I believe with my actions as well as with my mind that Jesus has the words of everlasting life?

Holy Week in 2 Minutes

This two minute video which runs through the holiest week of the year, Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday.
What did you learn from this video?  What could you pass on to your children?

Presentation of the Lord: a musical meditation

About Today

Today we Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas or the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.  As required by Jewish law, Mary and Joseph went to the temple to pray and dedicate Jesus, the first born, to God.  In the temple, they ran into Simeon and Anna.  When he looked at Jesus, Simeon prayed the a prayer now prayed nightly in the Night Prayer, found in Luke 2:29-32 and reprinted below:

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace;
your word has been fulfilled:

my own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people: 

a light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.

Musical Reflection
Sit back and take 4.5 minutes to listen to this musical reflection on the Presentation, a song called "Simeon's Joy" by Danielle Rose:


What kind of response do I give when I'm in God's presence?

Jesus' Big Question

What are you looking for?

Today's Gospel presents us with one of Jesus' biggest questions: "What are you looking for?"  If you're like those first disciples, you don't know how to answer, but instead switch the subject.  The disciples choose a topic that at first glance is a step up from asking about the weather; they ask where Jesus' is staying.  Christ responds "Come, and you will see."

We're presented with the opportunity to answer Jesus' big question.  What are you looking for?  And have you found it?  That reminds me of a song...


Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Car Conversation: Reminds You of Jesus

a statue of Jesus

An easy car conversation to hold with your children this week: Who have you seen or encountered this week that has reminded you of Jesus?  In what ways?


Makes sure before you ask the question you have an answer from your own life.  Your kids will probably ask you for an example right away.  The best examples will be someone that they know too, someone in their life.

Don't be intimidated or afraid -- you can do this!

Image: zole4 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net