Advent Morning Liturgy Guide

Nov 12

The Holidays are quickly approaching! Christmas is a season when the hustle and bustle of our culture conflicts with the quiet our spirits crave anticipating the birth of our King Jesus. This year, some of us at Watermark would like to honor this time of anticipation by joining with each other and the global church in the practices and prayers of Advent. You can find more information about the times we will meet together as well as the online Google Meet link on our Event Page.

Whether or not you can connect with us online, this time of Advent can still be an important time to embrace the experience of waiting that we all have at some point in our spiritual journey. Participating in the Advent season can give you a chance every week to recenter your soul in prayer before continuing on with the needs that arise for all of us daily. It is a time to join the global church in reading scripture together, listening to the Spirit and preparing our hearts for the coming of Jesus at Christmas.

You can use this guide for individual prayer, prayers with your family or house church, or you can join us online for any session throughout the season.

Why participate in Advent

Learning to wait for God

The liturgical calendar does not start at the time leading up to Christ’s birth because it is the most important part of the story of the Bible; it begins here because it reminds us that God met us where we were, in the darkness of waiting. Waiting is a part of the human experience. We wait as children for our birthdays, as adults for the chance to buy a house or start a new job, we wait for the birth of children or for God as we ask for him to call those children into being. When we are older, we wait for the adventures of retirement and ultimately for the calling to leave our experience here on earth and join God in his new earth. In all of this, we are expressing our humanity, our reliance on God to raise the sun each day and the moon each night.

Waiting, then, is an essential spiritual practice because it gives us space to ask God to enter into our life and join with us in the experience of inactivity and indirection while we wait for him to guide us. It gives us time to contemplate and set aside the things that have come to mean less to us throughout the year in order to give space for the better things that God has for us with the birth of a new season. Joan Chittister puts it best in her book The Liturgical Year,

“The function of Advent is to remind us what we’re waiting for as we go through life too busy with things that do not matter to remember the things that do. When year after year we hear the same scriptures and the same hymns of longing for the life to come, of which this one is only its shadow, it becomes impossible to forget the refrains of the soul.” - Joan Chittister

Recognize your connection with the Body of Christ (You are not alone)

In a time when we are tempted to focus inward on our own lives and worries, the Advent liturgy allows us to focus outside ourselves and even outside our own nuclear families to the church that is global and universal across time. This small space that we set aside to read what others are reading and focus in prayer on what others are praying reminds us of our connection to the Body of Christ in other countries and denominations. It allows us space to remember that the Church that belongs to Jesus is not just what we see but also a church that spans all of history. Our church family includes many who have gone before us whose lives reflected Christ and have left their light here on this earth for us to follow.

“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Romans 12:4-5

How to use this guide

These prayer sessions are not meant to be another “to do” on your already hectic holiday agenda, but rather an opportunity to be refreshed by paying closer attention to the purpose of this season.

· The guide is labeled (1-4) and broken into weekly and monthly sections. The call and response and the scripture changes weekly but the prayer focus is meant to be prayed daily for the whole of the season.

· The liturgy guide can be done Individually, with a group, or with all of us online in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Keep in mind that, even if you are by yourself, Christ and your fellow saints join with you as you reach for God.

· The scripture can be read all at once or be broken into smaller parts over the week as we will do it online. Elaboration from the early Christian mothers and fathers can be found in the Ancient Christian Devotional edited by Thomas C. Oden.

· Though this is called Morning Liturgy, do not feel beholden to use it in the mornings. This is meant to feed your soul whenever you choose.