Hello!
Happy Liturgical New Year! With Advent beginning this Sunday, I've been thinking about how to go through this season more intentionally.
One of the things I really liked that Olivia (from Catholic Girl Talk) did last year, was to choose a word as her Word of the Year, and really reflect on it and live by it throughout the year. So this year, I decided that I would do that as well, and follow the liturgical calendar for my year-long period. As I've been thinking about it, I keep coming back to the word trust, which I've ended up choosing. I know that at this point Advent is quite close, so while you could simply pick a word and let God work with it, you could also take Advent as a time to pray about what your word should be, and then go by the normal calendar year.
Speaking of trust, I would like to share with you this beautiful video from the Sisters of Life and RedeemedOnline: a music video for the Litany of Trust. RedeemedOnline also has a really awesome video series for the season of Advent (#ShareJesus) which has a new 2-3 minute video everyday, which for this season will feature religious sisters. I absolutely loved these videos last year, so I definitely recommend them.
This year I've been hearing a lot about the fact that Advent should be both preparatory and penitential. We all think of Lent as a time where we add something and give something up, but we should thing of Advent in a similar way. It is definitely a different season in the Church than Lent is, but it's not completely different. In these four weeks we ought to be preparing ourselves for the birth of Christ, both by adding something to our normal lives and by sacrificing a bit extra. I would love to hear about whatever you decide to do! Perhaps something you decided to do will be something you continue throughout the rest of the year!
As for this blog, I did take a break from writing for the month of November, mostly because I needed to be able to focus on the end of the semester. But going forward, my goal is to be posting something every Friday, like I had planned on doing before, with updates every other week. Next Friday will be the usual first-of-the-month post for December Saints, and each week after that will, I hope, be able to roughly alternate between one of the main categories and then a prayer/reflection. But another part of my goal is to have only about half of the posts be written entirely by me - I would love to have many more people helping with this project! So, going into Advent and the New Year, I hope you will think about writing (or co-writing!) a post. It could be as simple as a prayer and reflection, telling the story of your favorite saint, or a book recommendation! And as always, please share FiliaVeritatis with anyone you think might enjoy it, and let me know if you have any ideas for new topics.
Happy Advent!
God bless!
Caroline Thérèse
PS: You should always get these updates on Fridays.. but I have noticed that it takes a while (at least a few hours, to a full day sometimes) for the website to actually send them out. So if you don't get one on a Friday when you should have, look for it Saturday, as it may simply have taken a long time to send. ;)
"Dost thou hold wisdom to be anything other than truth, wherein we behold and embrace the supreme good?" St Augustine
