Christmas Novena

When Advent starts this early, it gets a little crazy in our domestic church.  

Our house is a mixture of all of our Holy Souls prayer things (vigil candles, calendar of beloved dead, and our special prayer book for the holy souls (more about that here)) and all of the beautiful Advent decorations.  It only lasts for a couple of days, but the overlap can make things seem a little overwhelming and even disjointed as our hearts and minds seem to be being pulled in multiple directions.  I don't want to deny a single soul of our extra prayers though....so we are keeping our vigil candle lit through today and we finished our final rosary and meditation on the Holy Souls in Purgatory this morning.  As Advent is a time to prepare not only for the birth of Christ, but for His second coming as well, having both decorations up is a nice visual reminder to prepare our souls for their ultimate end in hopes of eternity with Christ.  Tomorrow we will take it all down, but for the rest of today it looks like this:

So much to look at!

Tomorrow the vigil candle will be tucked away, and the calendar will be erased and taken down, to be filled in next year with all the names of those souls of our beloved dead who need our prayers.  All that will remain is the stable and the animals, waiting for the Holy Family to arrive on Christmas Eve.

Today is the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle and there is a beautiful novena attributed to him to prepare for the birth of Christ.  It starts today on his feast day and is said until Christmas Eve.  I was so excited when I got an e-mail this morning with free printables of the novena!  We have used my phone in the past, but now I have 4 prayer cards with beautiful illustrations for all of us to share.  I printed out the pages, glued the two together  and then laminated them and cut them out.  I am so excited.  Nothing makes me happier than beautiful artwork to go with our prayers.  Throw in some laminator action to help make everything sturdy and I am beyond giddy.  I'll stop chattering about it, and share the link for the printables now.

Here are a few pictures to show you how ours turned out.

2 beautiful designs 

Once I glued the two printed pages together and laminated them,
all we have to do is flip them over and we have the prayer on the back.
Pretty and functional.
A mama's dream come true.

I can't wait to start praying our novena tonight.  Tomorrow we will add it to the end of our morning rosary.  I love how each month as we live the liturgical year there is a way to so simply add a little something that lifts our hearts and minds to God in a special way for each passing season and it's focus.  

~May God Bless You and Yours this Advent Season. ~ 

Thanks for stopping by!