The Season of Saint Andrew
17
It seems like Christmas comes a little earlier each year.
In late summer, a few decorations start to clutter up the edges of craft stores. By October, Halloween’s décor is already being drowned out, and Thanksgiving is utter ignored. The whole commercial world is pushing Christmas as soon as possible.
With so much pressure to skip straight from ghost stories to Christmas carols, it’s no wonder even Catholics tend to overlook Advent. But Advent should never be overlooked! Especially when the time feels like it’s rushing by and Christmas feels like a season of pressure and loneliness instead of celebration. All the parties and gift-giving and images of happy families crowded around a glowing tree can intensify the sense of loneliness you’re already feeling this year! But embracing Advent will help.
Advent is a beautiful, quiet season of anticipation.
It’s the season that not only allows us to yearn and hope and dream, but actually insists we do! After all, we’re waiting for Christmas! We’re waiting for Christ our light to return and brighten the whole world, and we’re also waiting for other aspects of our lives to fall into place. In this deeply interior season of reflection, give yourself time to yearn!
In the Church calendar, Advent marks the beginning of the new, liturgical year. Like Lent, Advent is a time of preparation, when we have a chance to tidy up spiritually. Traditionally, Advent was a season of fasting and prayer, a mini-Lent, in which we prepared to greet the Infant Christ with hearts made new through prayer and penance.
These days, Advent is rarely embraced as a penitential season, but it’s still an ideal season for retreats, reflection, and renewal!
As difficult as it can be to prepare for another Christmas as a single, Advent really is the ideal time to reflect. Pray, hope, and work towards finding peace with the limitations and uncertainties inherent in life.
St. Andrew, the Advent Saint.
The season leading up to the Nativity of Christ has always been a season full of devotions for singles. Beginning on St. Andrew’s Eve, when traditionally, young adults seeking a spouse would ask St. Andrew’s assistance. Though no one really knows why the First-Called Apostle is a heavenly matchmaker, it may be because of his fearless vulnerability. As the first of the Apostles, Andrew was willing to give up everything for the person who would become everything to him.
During Advent, we’re offered the opportunity to spend quality time with Andrew, patron of the Unknown, new beginnings, and spouse-seeking single Catholics everywhere. His feast ends the old liturgical year and guides us into the new. One of the best ways to invite St. Andrew’s guidance is by praying the St. Andrew Novena this Advent!
Just as we step into the dark, anticipatory season of Advent after Andrew’s feast, Andrew himself stepped into the darkness of a new and overwhelming intimacy with God when he chose to follow Christ’s call.
If you haven’t yet discovered the St. Andrew Christmas Novena, incorporate this beautiful Advent ritual into your devotions. The St. Andrew Novena is a simple prayer, prayed 15 times each day from the feast of St. Andrew (November 30th) through Christmas Eve.
The prayer itself is beautiful:
Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God
was born of the Most-Pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem,
in the piercing cold.
In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer
and grant my desire through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ,
and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.
Consider making it part of your Advent devotion this year.
While it may seem repetitive and unnecessary to repeat a prayer 15 times per day, the repetition is an essential part of this Advent devotion. The St. Andrew Novena is like a tiny rosary—it’s a gentle meditation that allows us to breathe in praises for the love of God and breathe out hope again and again.
As you spend the whole season of Advent praying with and to St. Andrew, you’ll get a chance to lean into his radical trust in God’s plan and find ways to brighten your own hope with the confidence Andrew exudes. Maybe this novena, and an Advent spent with St. Andrew will inspire you to step out in a new and more vulnerable attitude toward life and relationships as well.
In the deeply internal, soul nourishing season of Advent, it’s essential to embrace reflective, gratitude-soaked prayers that remind us to hope. These prayers teach us to reflect on the past year, and the year to come in the light of Christ’s upcoming Nativity and His anticipated Second Coming. As we reflect, it’s easier to see where God is leading us, and easier to embrace the deep vulnerability that all relationships demand.
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