Prepare Your Heart: A Guided Advent Journal from Ave Maria Press

Fr. Agustino Torres, CFR, invites you on a pilgrimage this Advent using Prepare Your Heart: A Guided Advent Journal for Prayer and Meditation.

Fr. Agustino Torres, CFR, introduces us to the season of Advent—the Franciscan way—with the Prepare Your Heart Advent journal. Torres encourages us to enter into the story of Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem with Mary and Joseph as we prepare our hearts through prayer and meditation this Advent. 

Are you ready to journey with the Holy Family and the Saints this Advent? 

Each day of Prepare Your Heart includes daily meditations on a passage from Scripture, reflection questions, prayer, and space for journaling and notetaking. The back of the book contains a QR code readers can use to access the free weekly videos (which will be shown here on CatholicMom.com every Sunday).

Each week of this meditation journal has a theme:

• Week 1 of Advent: The Way of Nazareth
• Week 2 of Advent: The Way of the Saints (Mary, John the Baptist, Saint Andrew the Apostle, Saint Nicholas, Saint Lucy, Saint Juan Diego, and Our Lady of Guadalupe)
• Week 3 of Advent: The Way of Saint Joseph
• Week 4 of Advent: The Way of Mary

I love that the meditations often reference Franciscan practices and traditions in cultural and historical context, and then invite the reader to consider how those practices can become part of their daily spirituality. Each daily entry begins with a Scripture passage, which is provided for you so you won't even need to make sure to have a Bible handy. This is followed by a meditation just about a page long: a gentle invitation to ponder our spiritual preparations according to the weekly themes, two reflection questions and a lined page for journaling, and a brief closing prayer.

The closing prayers are beautiful in themselves, and if you're looking for a new way to pray at your Advent wreath this year, those prayers would work perfectly for that purpose.

Prepare Your Heart features stunning original art by Valerie Delgado of Pax.Valerie. Free weekly companion videos, a downloadable discussion guide, and other resources at AveMariaPress.com make this book perfect for parishwide, individual, and book club use leading up to Christmas. The book, videos, leader’s guide, and family guide are available in Spanish as well.

Look for the Prepare Your Heart videos each Sunday in Advent, as well as Christmas Day, here on CatholicMom.com at 10 AM Eastern.

Ask for Prepare Your Heart at your local Catholic bookstore, or order from Amazon.com or Ave Maria Press. Bulk discounts are available for your parish, book club, or prayer group when you purchase the book from Ave Maria Press.

Copyright 2023 Barb Szyszkiewicz
Images: Ave Maria Press

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