Below you can find Advent reflections, based on the daily liturgical readings. On Sundays, you’ll find reflections labeled according to the cycle to which they belong. For weekdays in Advent, readings are the same every year.
- Sundays:
- Year A: 2022, 2025, 2028, 2031, etc.
- Year B: 2023, 2026, 2029, 2032, etc.
- Year C: 2024, 2027, 2030, 2033, etc.
Jump to a specific week:
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Dec 17-25
Sunday In the First week of Advent
Year A
Walk in the Light, Throw Off The Works of Darkness
†Why do we walk in the light and throw off bad works? Not just to follow the rules! We must do this because we yearn to be with the source of love and love him in turn.
Year B
†Do you know who and what you’re waiting for in Advent? Or are we like the actors in Waiting for Godot?
The Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle – November 30
†Our evangelical shout that Jesus Christ is Lord — an act meant to lovingly draw people to the truth — is both our mission and our salvation.
†To celebrate a feast day on the liturgical calendar is to affirm what we believe and to welcome love into our day.
Monday in the First Week of Advent
†Faith is this unflagging trust in the ultimate authority of God that whatever He says will be done. Faith is won by obedience, not by continual testing, probing, and skepticism.
Tuesday in the First Week of Advent
†Isaiah sees what we should see in Christ: his humanity, his divinity and his importance in ushering in the Kingdom of God.
†Jesus teaches us how we must feel about God’s will for humanity: joyous thankfulness.
Wednesday in the First Week of Advent
On Feasting, Being Saved, and Recognizing
†Isaiah, like Christ, shares three touchstones of our Christian faith today: the feast, the removal of the veil of death, and the recognition of God as Savior.
Thursday in the First Week of Advent
†Jesus takes up Isaiah’s theme of God being the rock and the strength upon which we should rely.
Pylons of Faith, Sweat of the Brow
†Resisting temptations to hate, jealousy, resentment, etc. that Satan spends his hours insinuating in our minds takes prayer, reliance on God’s power, and placing ourselves at His feet.
Friday in the First Week of Advent
†A deep dive into this chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, with help from Fr. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis.
The Call and Response of Faith
†How to respond to the misnomer “blind faith” by re-casting the question as the appropriate reception of truth given to us by our divine Creator.
Saturday in the First Week of Advent
The Generous Harvest Without Cost
†Reflecting on how Jesus’s great compassion is the moving force behind his saving work and establishment of the Church.
Laboring for the Master’s Harvest
†The helpless, abandoned crowds of troubled people are the ripe fruit of Jesus Christ’s harvest.
Sunday in the Second Week of Advent
Year A
†Fire is God’s judgement rendered and, importantly, it is a fire that cleans. It is a way to finalize the harvest season, to reset an ordered existence.
Year B
Leveling Mountains and Valleys
†What are the mountains and valleys in our souls that need leveling to make way for the Lord?
Monday in the Second Week of Advent
†We must be the paralytic, unable to move on our own, suffering, but filled with the vision of something incomparably better.
†Allow yourself to be continually seized by ekstasis over the glory and power of our God.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception – December 8
Understanding the Immaculate Conception
†The scriptural basis for the Immaculate Conception rests in the Angel Gabriel’s greeting: Chaire, kecharitōmenē, ho kyrios meta sou!
Tuesday in the Second Week of Advent
†When we eat the Eucharist, we are imbibing in the flesh of the one who carries us in his bosom, who protects us, and who literally died for us.
Wednesday in the Second Week of Advent
†Today’s readings are like a Catholic Labor Day: take up Christ’s yoke of obedience to the Father and learn that humbleness of heart will give us the rest and rejuvenation we crave.
Hope, Rest, and Renewal in Christ
†St. Ambrose reminds us that faith is the door through which Christ enters. He is waiting at the door of everyone’s soul.
Thursday in the Second Week of Advent
The Violent Transformation of Love
†The sometimes violent nature of love transforms something lukewarm into something passionate.
Friday in the Second Week of Advent
†Jesus is not content with us staying in our comfort zone, being lukewarm and even cynical.
†Our challenge today is to stop believing in human endeavor above all else and instead to start believing in God and his power.
Saturday in the Second Week of Advent
John is Elijah; Both Prepare the Way
†As prophets transformed by the Word of God, Elijah and John participate in the Word’s transcendence of time and history.
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe – October 12
Sunday in the Third Week of Advent
Year A
A Day of Vindication by our God
†Christ’s coming attests to God in every way, blessing the entire stream of salvation history. He truly is — by his very existence — a day of vindication by our God.
Year B
†Can we expand our understanding of “joy” to comprehend the joy of Jesus on the Cross, obtaining his heart’s desire, a perfect sacrifice to the Father that provided salvation for humanity?
Monday in the Third Week of Advent
Memorial of Saint John of the Cross
†A reflection with the help of St. John of the Cross: “What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love.”
Tuesday in the Third Week of Advent
†We are called to have an ongoing conversion of heart — while learning to accept correction — and then we can start producing the fruits of the kingdom.
†Let us pray the Litany of Humility this Advent and conform our hearts more and more to doing God’s will alone.
Wednesday in the Third Week of Advent
Thursday in the Third Week of Advent
Widows and our Spiritual Family
†May we all recapture the diakonos way of living and serving that is part of the path to the Kingdom.
December 17: Genesis 49:2, 8-10, Matthew 1:1-17
†This image reminds us that true, divine power gives birth to charity, never violence.
December 18: Jeremiah 23:5-8, Matthew 1:18-25
The Back-Seat Servitude of Fatherhood
†In a way, Joseph prefigures the sacrifice his son will make on the cross. He gives his person, his pride, his authority to the Father.
December 19: Judges 13:2-7, 24-25a, Luke 1:5-25
“Fathering” the Word of God, Part II
†We all must germinate and gestate the Word in our hearts and souls; we all must meet God’s plan with humility and acceptance rather than hesitation and excuses.
December 20: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16, Luke 1:26-38
†Gabriel tells Mary that her womb will be a living house for the Lord. This is why Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
From Genie God to Fantastic God
†God’s great plan to give us Emmanuel, His Son, is way more fantastic than a genie granting wishes. Fantastic in all senses — unbelievable, supernatural, awesome, great, immensely pleasing.
December 21: Song of Solomon 2:8-14, Luke 1:35-49
†Every time we give thanks to God and ask for His help in becoming a better person, He grants us greater depth of vision in recognizing His work in the world.
†Our Eucharist received in bread and wine is the same communion that made John leap in the womb, that made Elizabeth cry out in a loud voice, and made Mary immaculate
December 22: 1 Samuel 1:24-28, Luke 1:46-56
†Like Mary’s Magnificat, the mysteries lived out in the Mass achieve a level of call and response that echoes our deepest yearnings for God and His for us.
†Through our charity, our souls can magnify the image of God and be a source of inspiration for others to join the Church in liturgy.
December 23: Malachi 3:1-4, 23-24, Luke 1:57-66
†God uses Zechariah as an example of how we must silence our own will while He does the work of refining our spirit — with our acceptance being paramount.
December 24, Christmas Eve: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16, Luke 1:67-79
†A reflection on the Benedictus as uttered by Zechariah, and how the Holy Spirit’s presence can connect a person with all the great kairos of God’s coming to humanity, instilling a sense of peace and gravity that only comes with one aware of and active within that great plan.