Advent Retreat Online

Hello, Friends! We’re happy to share with you again this year an online Advent Retreat with our Discalced Carmelite Friars. All you need to do is open the link below and sign up to receive the material and watch with videos. We’ll be joining you in prayer as we journey towards the great feast of the Incarnation!

Let us not pass by this holy season of Advent amidst the commercial and secular distractions all around, focused on Christmas already. Advent is a time of waiting and longing, of preparing our hearts for a spiritual festivity, a supernatural reality, an encounter with a real person, but also a real God! This God comes in obscurity, in silence and hidden… in poverty, lowliness and humility.

May Mary, Mistress of the Advent, also guide us during this Advent season, along with her daughter St. Therese of Lisieux. The picture below shows our Lady’s inward, attentive gaze upon the Son in her womb, her very God. We can ask her to teach us the same inward silence she practiced while waiting for his birth.

May God bless you and know of our prayers for you!

O Mary, Mistress of the Advent, unlock for us the still, white way of thy surrender to Almightiness, and bring to flower and fruit within us the expectant hope, the eager love of all our longing. Guard inviolable in us the purity of our consecration. Let the simplicity of our silent giving and the hiddenness of our immolation bring us in serenity and praise to the joy of Christ’s Nativity.

May we be formed in Him, as He is born again in us to make all things new, in the renewal of His Mysteries. May we awaken to the Light of His Divinity, that in the silent grafting of our life to His, we may come to that tranquil offering of ourselves, that is the praise of God, Our Father and the fulness of our peace. Amen.