ADVENT SERVICE – YEAR C 

Scripture, Reflections and Music Suggestions 

Procession of Light
Warm the Time of Winter (Lori True)

Eager Welcome (Opening Prayer)
Open our hearts in welcome (Opening Prayer)

Opening Prayer and Gesture 

To you, O Lord, I lift my soul, to you I lift my soul (Psalm 24)

Responsorial Psalm    To You, O Lord (Marty Haugen)

Make more and more progress in the life that you are meant to live (1 Thess.3)

Take Me As I Am (John Bell)

 Stay awake … praying at all times (Luke 21:36)

.. if there is anything you need, pray for it (Phil 4)

Wait for the Lord (Taizé)

Take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of the glory of God forever (Baruch 5:1)

Action of Undressing and Dressing 

What marvels the Lord worked for us (Psalm 125)

Responsorial Psalm                What Marvels the Lord Worked (Cyril Murphy)

Rejoice in the Lord always (Entrance Antiphon)
Rejoice in the Lord always (Round)
Rejoice, Rejoice (Messiah – Handel) 

My prayer is that your love for each other will increase more and more (Phil 1)

Our real journey in life is interior; it is a matter of growth, of deepening, and of even greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. (Thomas Merton)

The language that God hears best is the silent language of love. (St. John of the Cross)

Word of the Father (Iona Community) 

Prepare a way for the Lord …winding ways will be straightened and rough roads made smooth (Luke 3)

Ullmhaigi Bothar an Tiarna (Máire Ni Dhuibhir)
Prepare the Way of the Lord (Godspell)

He will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival (Zeph 3:18)

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation (Isaiah 12)
We Shall Draw Water Joyfully (Paul Inwood)

 If anyone has two tunics he must share with the man who has none, and the one with something to eat must do the same (Luke 3:10)
Trócaire Christmas Gifts

Let the clouds rain down the just one (Entrance Antiphon)
Rorate Coeli (Plainchant)

 He will stand and feed his flock … He himself will be peace (Micah 5)
There is in the centre of the soul a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if he will only enter and hush every other sound, we will hear his still small voice. There is in the swiftest wheel that revolves on its axis, a place in the very centre where there is no movement at all; and so in the busiest life there is a place where we can dwell alone with God in eternal stillness. There is only one way to know God, “Be still and know”. God is in his holy temple, let the earth keep silence before Him. (C.E.Cowman)

 Bring us back (Psalm 79)
Save Us O Lord (Bob Dufford) 

Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled (Luke 1)
Magnificat (John Michael Talbot)

 And she will call him Emmanuel (Communion Antiphon)
No-one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with us. Without poverty of Spirit, there can be no abundance of God. (Oscar Romero)

O Come Emmanuel (French Traditional)