Ready to wait and pray? Advent resources, prayers, and blessings

The late timing for this year’s fourth Thursday of November finds us just cleaning up from the Thanksgiving feast as we rush to dust off the Advent wreath. The new liturgical year starts this weekend with this sacred season of waiting and preparation. The first Sunday is Advent commences with the first vigil Mass on Saturday evening.

And it comes at a perfect time for us to take a deep breath. Many families have engaged in a lot of cooking, cleaning, traveling, and Christmas shopping in the past few days. Advent is a reminder to slow down and focus on the spiritual while the secular world continues to rush around with more shopping, decorating, baking, wrapping, and lengthy to-do lists.  

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“Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us.”