Advent & Christmas eResources A Season of Gracious Gifts Advent Retreat Kit

Reproducible leader guide and handouts • Provided in Word and PDF files

Use this flexible kit to bring prayerful Advent reflections to your people, whether as a full-day retreat, parish meeting, morning or evening of reflection, parish mission, youth event, or more. It's really three retreat experiences in one that you can draw from year-after-year.

In this retreat, Sr. Janet offers us a prayerful opportunity to slow down in the midst of this busy season and reflect on the gracious gifts of Advent. What is offered to us? How might we respond?

This guide includes three sessions, each exploring a different gracious gift of God during the Advent season (and beyond):

• The Gracious Gift of Never-Ending Presence - God is truly with us through the Incarnation, and God's coming should change us.
• The Gracious Gift of Expectant Waiting - Advent waiting is an active, open-ended practice, which anticipates a promise will be fulfilled. And in Advent we wait together, in a special way.
• The Gracious Gift of Unquenchable Hope - This is a season of hope, a virtue that can be difficult to get our heads and hearts around.  It's something we can deepen with gratitude and releasing our worry and fear.

This kit has been prepared as a guide for parish leaders – with all the components prepared for you:

• Advanced planning guidelines
• Song suggestions
• Scripture readings
• Prayer
• Leader talking points
• Reflection and discussion questions
• Participant handouts
• Prayerful commitments

You will not necessarily need all of the included options, so just use what fits in the time and format you have.  The clear and attractive design with icons makes it a breeze to follow.

These sessions can be used in one of the following ways:

• A full-day retreat. For this case, you will want to exclude opening and closing portions of some of the sessions.

• A series of shorter, retreat-like events. For example, you could offer one session per week for three weeks, or three consecutive mornings or evenings.

• A single morning or evening event. In this case, you would use only one of the three enclosed sessions and save the others for subsequent years.

• Adapt for other uses. You can also use these materials as a personal retreat, or as source material for preaching, presentation, or other gatherings. This kit is well suited for gatherings of RCIA participants, parents, parish ministers (e.g. catechists, liturgical ministers, parish pastoral council and commissions, etc.), members of the parish staff, or anyone else in the parish.

Janet Schaeffler, OP--an Adrian Dominican Sister--has spent many years in parish and archdiocesan catechetical ministry (most recently as Director of Adult Faith Formation for the archdiocese of Detroit). The author of hundreds of articles and several publications in catechetical and parish ministry, her articles can be found in The Priest, Catechetical Leader, Catechist, Ministry and Liturgy, etc. Janet currently accompanies others on their faith-journey through days of reflection/retreats, parish missions, workshops, catechist formation opportunities, adult faith formation opportunities, Myers-Briggs explorations, and online courses.