What's in Your Prie-Dieu for Advent?

The Nativity by Antoniazzo Romano

During the different liturgical seasons, the Sisters often gravitate toward seasonally-focused spiritual reading to help direct their hearts and prayers in the spirit of the season. During Advent, one sees the Sisters using various books on Our Lord's incarnation, Our Lady's role in the mysteries of redemption, the Holy Family, the Four Last Things, or other content pertaining to the coming of Christ at Christmas. 

As we are now nearing the end of Advent, the Sisters are well into their Advent reading and have a few quotes they wanted to share to aid in your spiritual renewal during this season. We hope they inspire you to dive deeper into what Jesus wishes to teach you regarding His coming as our "Emmanuel", God-with-us. ​

"Advent is a time of being deeply shaken, so that man will wake up to himself. The prerequisite for a fulfilled Advent is a renunciation of the arrogant gestures and tempting dreams with which, and in which, man is always deceiving himself...But at the same time there is much more to Advent than this. The shaking is what sets up the secret blessedness of this season and enkindles the inner light in our hearts, so Advent will be blessed with the promises of the Lord. The shaking, the awakening: with these, life merely begins to become capable of Advent. It is precisely in the severity of this awakening, in the helplessness of coming to consciousness, in the wretchedness of experiencing our limitations that the golden threads running between Heaven and earth during this season reach us; the threads that give the world a hint of the abundance to which it is called, the abundance of which it is capable" (Fr. Alfred Delp S.J., The Advent of the Heart).

Lighting the Advent Wreath at Dinner

"Jesus wants you to accept St. Joseph as your spiritual father. This is true whether you have had a saintly or sinful biological father. Saint Joseph is the greatest, most loving, and holiest of all fathers. He is the father of Christians and the perfect model of paternal love" (Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC; Consecration to St. Joseph).

"In the expression "Blessed is she who believed," we can therefore rightly find a kind of "key" which unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary, whom the angel hailed as "full of grace." If as "full of grace" she has been eternally present in the mystery of Christ, through faith she became a sharer in that mystery in every extension of her earthly journey. She "advanced in her pilgrimage of faith" and at the same time, in a discreet yet direct and effective way, she made present to humanity the mystery of Christ. And she still continues to do so. Through the mystery of Christ, she too is present within mankind. Thus through the mystery of the Son the mystery of the Mother is also made clear"
(St. John Paul II,  Redemptoris Mater).

“{Mary} loves them tenderly, more tenderly than all the mothers in the world together. Take the maternal love of all the mothers of the world for their children. Pour all that love into the heart of one mother for an only child. That mother’s love would certainly be immense. Yet Mary’s love for each of her children has more tenderness than the love of that mother for her child” (St. Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary).

"Let us kneel down and pray for the threefold blessing and the threefold consecration of Advent. Let us pray for the openness and willingness to hear the warning prophets of the Lord and to overcome the devastation of life through conversion of heart...let us kneel down and pray for keen eyes capable of seeing God's messengers of annunciation, for vigilant hearts wise enough to perceive the words of the promise...One more time, we want to kneel and pray for faith in life's motherly consecration, in the figure of the blessed woman from Nazareth. Already, today and for always, life is torn away from the cruel and merciless powers. Let us be patient and wait, with an Advent waiting for the hour in which it pleases the Lord to appear anew, even in this night, as fruit and mystery of this time" (Fr. Alfred Delp S.J., The Advent of the Heart).

Rorate Mass at the Convent

To sum up, Mary becomes all things for the soul that wishes to serve Jesus Christ. She enlightens his mind with her pure faith. She deepens his heart with her humility. She enlarges and inflames his heart with her charity, makes it pure with her purity, makes it noble and great through her motherly care. But why dwell on this? Experience alone will teach us the wonder wrought by Mary in the soul, wonders so great that the wise and the proud and even a great number of devout people find it hard to credit them (St. Louis Marie de Montfort, Secret of Mary).