Advent (a new Church Year) begins this weekend, and I’ve put together some recommendations to have a great Advent and truly prepare for Christmas. The list is inspired by the challenge to fast from our cell phones in order to strengthen relationships, wait in silence for Christ to enter our hearts, and reduce distractions from good prayer.
1. Make more room for Christ in your busy life. Create space in your heart for receiving the wonder of the Incarnation (God breaking into the world). Fast from what keeps you from prayer. Put your phone aside for a pre-determined amount of time each day.
2. Spend time daydreaming about God loving the world so much that he sent his Son to save us.
3. Talk to one another. Have dinner as a family; put your phones in a basket in the next room. The first one to take his or her phone out of the basket has to do the dishes.
4. Play board games often.
5. Bake cookies together and tell stories about your favorite Christmas.
6. Figure out who’s lonely on your street, visit that person, and bring them the cookies you baked, let them tell their stories.
7. Invite someone outside your comfort zone to a Christmas party.
8. Give to the New Canaan Giving Box, then call someone you haven’t talked to in a while, just listen, then put down your phone, pray for that person and all those in need.
9. Pray for our teens and adults going to Kentucky to distribute our “Project 1,000” Christmas stockings; imagine the joys and smiles of the children receiving their gifts.
10. Heal a wounded relationship with the help of Jesus.
11. Don’t spend a lot of time shopping; buy gift cards instead and use the time you saved to attend weekday Mass.
12. Have coffee with anyone who will go with you and share funny stories only.
13. If you shop, shop local – your chances of running into friends and neighbors and saying “Merry Christmas” increase tenfold.
14. Smile at strangers.
15. Invite friends or neighbors who haven’t been to church in a while to come with you to Mass at Christmas. Keep inviting them after Christmas.
16. Count your blessings. Thank God for everything – even the messy things in life.
17. Put down your phone and look up at the stars and the sky and imagine you’re in peaceful Bethlehem the night Jesus was born.
18. Pray for peace.
I’m praying that you will have a blessed Advent.
Welcome to the Saint Aloysius! Our parish was founded in 1896 to serve the Catholic families that were settling in the greater New Canaan area.