USCCB Offers Advent and Christmas Online Resources for Prayerful Preparation
WASHINGTON—The UnitedStates Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is offering online resources forprayerful preparation for Advent and Christmas. The daily suggestions forreading, reflection, and prayer during the Advent and Christmas seasons are nowavailable online.
WASHINGTON—The UnitedStates Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is offering online resources forprayerful preparation for Advent and Christmas. The daily suggestions forreading, reflection, and prayer during the Advent and Christmas seasons are nowavailable online. In addition to a clickable online Advent calendar, with eachclick opening "doors" to a page of suggested reading, the online page also offersdaily reflections, prayers, suggested activities and bilingual calendars thatcan be printed.
The U.S. Conferenceof Catholic Bishops (USCCB) provides the online Advent and Christmas resourcesat https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/advent/index.cfm and https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/christmas/index.cfm.
This year, inaddition to the traditional bilingual calendar for Advent that can be printedout, the USCCB is also offering a second bilingual Advent calendar specificallyfor families, with daily suggestions for prayers and activities to do as afamily in preparation for Christmas. Suggestions include creating a Jesse Tree,blessing the family Nativity, and taking time to learn about Advent traditionsaround the world.
Other Adventresources on the website include liturgical notes on the season, a commentaryon the proper prayers of the Advent season from the Roman Missal, and prayersand blessings from the USCCB publication Catholic Household Blessings andPrayers. Also included are lectiodivinas for the four Sundays of Advent.
For Christmas, in addition to the clickable calendar and the bilingualcalendar that can be printed, there are lectio divinas for four feast daysduring the Christmas season—the Solemnity of Christmas; the Feast of the HolyFamily of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother ofGod; and the Solemnity of the Epiphany. The lectio divinas are also availablein English and Spanish.
Advent begins on December 3 and continues until theevening of December 24 when the Christmas season begins. The Christmas seasonwill conclude with the Baptism of the Lord on Jan. 8, 2018.
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Keywords: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB, website, resources,Advent, Christmas, prayer, lectio divina, Roman Missal, reflection, families
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