Hows your Advent going?
Here we are in week two and we are doing so-so on our goals to grow in holiness and have our hearts ready for Jesus when Christmas day comes.
I was going to include a picture of our wreath looking all perfect by itself but I decided this was much more realistic!
I don’t know why Advent always sneaks up on me! Actually I’m so focused on Thanksgiving–I can only prepare for one thing at a time.
As far as goals go, I’m trying to keep it simple, realistic (as our lifestyle seem to keep getting busier and busier) and not too overwhelming.
Anyway, here’s what we are focusing on as a family:
- Advent wreath with special prayer and Gospel reflection (from Magnificat companion) everyday at dinner
- family Rosary once a week
- family Adoration once a week (which can and probably will be brief)
- Earn hay through kind deeds to put in the manger so that baby Jesus will be warm when He comes on Christmas day (a little more on this in the next post)
- And this year, instead of focusing on the virtue we need to work on the most, we are going to try something different: focus on improving our greatest virtue.
This last goal is an experiment based on advice from Eva’s religion teacher who said that if you improve your already strong virtues, your weaker virtues will improve too. And that this is a much less discouraging process than focusing on our weaknesses. I’m much more inclined to have them set a goal to improve on weaknesses–like the story of Saint Therese going out of her way to be nice to the Sister she liked the least–but we will try it this year!
We all took a virtue test to help Eva with a school project in religion, so we all have an idea of what our strongest virtue is. (To take the test, follow this link: https://www.viacharacter.org/www/ ). Then they each set a concrete goal to help them work on that.
I also asked the kids how they were going to focus on giving, not getting this season. I’ll have more on that–and their goals–in my next post.
We are not the best at setting these goals and especially at following through (not for 4 weeks straight anyway) but as always I’m hoping that whatever we actually are able to accomplish has some positive effect on their character and their spiritual life.
Here’s to our imperfect Advent walk!
What does your family do during Advent?