“Many will argue that as long as human beings are human, imperfections will result. Granted. But we should never let our longing for what is highest be held back by our imperfections. Herein lies the hope of Advent – a time when we look toward the day when all people shall become brothers and sisters because they are all sons and daughters of God. For in this one child, so helpless in the crib, a childlike spirit has been revealed on the earth. And this is the answer to life’s deepest and most difficult questions. He alone fulfills our innermost longing.” ~Eberhard Arnold

“Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus.” ~Neal A. Maxwell

“At Advent we celebrate the basis of our hope in the future, our confidence in the utter reality of what is to be, by giving focus to the reality that was and is, the presence in our flesh and in our world of God in Christ, the divine made human, the God who becomes man in the form of Jesus Christ, that all creation might be made holy. The truth of Advent is not simply that what once was might be again; the truth of Advent is that what was is and is to be, and is to be in such a way that we are able now to live and flourish and contend in the anticipated light of it’s coming. We are able to bear this present darkness because we believe in the coming dawn, a dawn that is not simply like the night, only longer, but a dawn in which the shadows and shades of night are seen for what they are and are not, and we will be able to tell the difference between hope and humbug.” ~Rev. Peter J. Gomes

Grant, almighty God, that looking forward in faith to the feast of our Lord’s birth, we may feel all the happiness our Savior brings and celebrate his coming with unfailing joy. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

“Human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the quiet. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ must be born and in their very manger he must be laid – and they will be the first to fall on their knees before him. Sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty, self-abandoned to God.” ~Evelyn Underhill

“Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection. Often they beseech God, with great yearnings, that He will take from them their imperfections and faults, but they do this that they may find themselves at peace, and may not be troubled by them, rather than for God’s sake; not realizing that, if He should take their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. Herein they are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others.” ~St. John of the Cross

May the glorious intercession of the Virgin and Martyr Lucy give us new heart, we pray, O Lord, so that we may celebrate her heavenly birthday in this present age and so behold things eternal. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

O God, Father of mercies, who placed your people under the singular protection of your Son’s most holy Mother, grant that all who invoke the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe may seek with ever more lively faith the progress of peoples in the ways of justice and of peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

“Advent is the time of promise; it is not yet the time of fulfillment. We are still in the midst of everything and in the logical inexorability and relentlessness of destiny.…Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernible as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today.” ~Alfred Delp