Advent Stories and Prayers for the Season
Bringing Home Christmas on a Daily Basis: Daily Readings
Dec 4, 2008
Here are two more books to add to the Advent and Christmas reading collection: (See purchase details at end of review.)
- Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas
- Christmastide: Prayers for Advent through Epiphany by Phyllis Tickle
Watch for the Light:
Here is a handsome collection of short essays and stories from The Plough Publishing House of excerpts from authors as diverse as St. Thomas Aquinas, Bonhoeffer, Annie Dillard, C. S. Lewis and Madeline L’Engle. Each day of the Advent season presents its own reading, its own thoughts and wisdom for that day. This book reads like a well lit ship traversing the seas through both calm and storm.
Here, for instance, is an excerpt from the reading for today, December 5th:
There is perhaps nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up. Where life is firm we need to sense its firmness; and where it is unstable and uncertain and has no basis, no foundation, we need to know this too and endure it.
(These words appropriately came from Alfred Delp who was condemned as a traitor for the stand he took against Hitler.)
Madeleine L'Engle and Jane Kenyon
Yesterday’s reading from December 4th by Madeleine L’Engle opens the door on the Christmas season, to watch the star, aptly named A Sky Full of Children.
I walk out onto the deck of my cottage, looking up at the great river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky. …Evening. Evening of this day. Evening of my own life.
There is a lovely poem by the wonderful poet Jane Kenyon that reads, in part:
On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
As the publishers write, “Watch for the Light can be dipped into at leisure or followed as a guide to daily devotions. Either way, it will give new meaning to the phrase “holiday preparations.”
Christmastide:
A second book that calls out this season (or maybe whispered) whenever Advent and prayer are mentioned is this wonderful edition to Phyllis Tickle’s Divine Hours Trilogy. This is her Christmastide: Prayers for Advent Through Epiphany.
Praying the Hours comes from an ancient Benedictine tradition and is commonly practiced in Benedictine abbeys throughout the world. However, over the last twenty years or so many Christians have begun to reclaim this ancient practice of praying the hours as it brings a new spirit of passionate engagement with the Lord and eases the days’ burdens.
Phyllis Tickles writes, “For me, and based on my own years of “praying the hours,” fixed-hour prayer is best understood as a kind of free, widely windowed, and open passageway between two places—one very physical and the other very virtual.”
Between Dailiness and the Divine
It is this moving “back and forth,” she writes, “between attending the bustle of each day…to the eternal timelessness and magnificence of divine life.” One can think of no finer intention for this advent season.
This book of prayer is laid out in such a way that all one needs do is open to that day of the week, and follow along. Praying the hours with this book never fails to lift and inspire; the temenos or holy space created by these devotions is palpable and alive.
The three suggested times for praying the Divine Hours are:
- Morning Office to be observed between 6 and 9 a.m
- Midday Office to be observed between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
- Vespers Office to be observed between 5 and 8 p.m.
The text is taken from a wide variety of sources including The Book of Common Prayer, the New Jerusalem Bible, King James Bible, and the work of St. Augustine. This widely acclaimed new contribution to praying the Daily Office focuses private prayer life through the days of the Christmas season.
Purchase details:
Watch for the Light is published by The Plough Publishing House of Farmington, PA, 2001.
Christmastide: Prayers for Advent through Epiphany compiled by Phyllis Tickle is published by Galilee of Doubleday in New York, 2003.
See other article Suite article on ideas for advent reading: Advent: Rare Christmas Books for Children. For more about praying the Divine Hours and Phylis Tickle's magnificent books see Lenten Season Prayers and Inspiration.
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