Feast: Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas)

Initially called the "festival of lights", inspired by the words of Simeon, this feast led to the custom of blessing candles, giving the feast its popular name of Candlemas.  This feast also concludes the birth cleebrations and begins the route toward Easter with the offering by the Virign Mother of her firstborn and the prophecy of Simeon. [excerpted from Rosa Giorgi's Saints: A Year in Faith and Art ... a book we used daily!]

May we always be "a light to the Gentiles", too!

 

Advent 2010: First Sunday!

From today's opening prayer:

All powerful God, increase our strength of will for doing good that Christ may find an eager welcome at his coming and call us to his side in the kingdom of heaven, where he lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

 

Feast: Presentation of Our Lord

God, our Father, source of eternal light,

fill the hearts of all believers with the light of faith!

Advent: Preparing to Prepare for the King's Birth

We are so amazingly organized for Advent this year:

• we've picked our "patron saints" for the year -- the chosen were St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. John Vianney, St. Damien Molokai and St. Catherine of Siena.  Each of these saints has a connection to the common theme of the priesthood (since this is the Year of the Priest).  We made frames for these patron saints "cards" and have them all ready to hang by each person's bed tomorrow.


• we've redone the Advent blocks we've used for the past three years.  This year, due to a lack of really good Advent calendar choices available, we are using the Advent blocks as our Advent Calendar -- starting Dec 1st, we'll pull a block which gives us the Saint of the Day, the piece of the Nativity we'll be making, the treat or craft activity we'll work on, the prayer intention for the day, and an image that represents that day.  Our previous version of these blocks were pulled randomly -- I'm striving for organization this year!

• we've got the Advent Candles -- this year we're foregoing a "wreath" and instead doing a 5-candle strip that has the white candle in the center and the four advent candles which will be changed to white candles during the Octave of Christmas.

• 
  
  our Jesse Tree is ready also
  

• so, we have everything ready EXCEPT I can't seem to find the Advent-purple cloth for the altar (yes, I do have a Lenten-purple but I KNOW I put the other one somewhere .... St. Anthony please come around and help me as the Altar is just not quite ready for Advent ...
  
  

Blessings and prayers for your own Advent events!