Monday, November 23, 2020

Advent Devotionals for 2020

 Advent is right around the corner (it starts on Sunday, November 29th). It can be helpful to have an Advent devotional to add a little something extra to your prayer time and help you get ready for Christmas. Here are three new ones from Ave Maria Press that have crossed my desk recently.


The Living Gospel by Deacon Charles Paolino is a traditional devotional, focusing on prayer, Scripture, reflections, and action. It is a practical guide to deepening your faith and helping you to concentrate on God's desire "not to condemn us, but rather to save us." Each reflection would probably take you about 5 minutes, more if you meditate on the Scripture.

Messages of Joy for Advent and Christmas 2020 by Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran bills itself as a 3-Minute Devotional. This is the Advent devotional for people with a true time crunch who never-the-less still want to do what they can to prepare spiritually for Christmas. It offers a Scripture passage, very short reflection, and a quick action for each day. It focuses on the importance of generosity and how generosity leads to joy. 

"At Christmas we celebrate that God the Father gave us his best by giving us his Son. . . .Since God is a generous giver, growing as followers of Christ means growing in generosity. If we are becoming more like Christ, then we will be generous as he is generous."


 

If you have a teen in your life, you might want to check out Advent and Christmas: One Day at a Time for Catholic Teens by Katie Prejean McGrady and Tommy McGrady. This devotional offers Scripture, prayers, reflection, a "Grow Your Soul" action, and a "Feel Ambitious" (an optional activity to strengthen your soul even more) for each day of Advent and Christmas through Epiphany. This book is evergreen, meaning it can be used during any liturgical year, not only 2020. 

It is designed for "teens to grow and have a deep and abundant trust in the goodness and love of God, who has nothing but the very best plans for you." It is great to have a devotional designed especially for teens.


This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Purchases made after clicking through an Amazon link on this site help support this blog. Thank you!





No comments:

#OpenBook for March 2024

  Welcome to #OpenBook. I'm joining up with Carolyn Astfalk who hosts an #OpenBook Linkup on CatholicMom.com . Here's what I'v...