Catholic Family Devotions

Understanding the Day

Season

Advent

Week

Week 3 of Advent

Rank

Weekday

Advent is a short liturgical season of preparation and hopeful waiting for the coming of Christ at Christmas. During the third week of Advent, the mood grows increasingly expectant: Scripture readings and prayers often highlight John the Baptist’s call to repentance and the nearness of the Lord. A Thursday of Week 3 is an ordinary weekday in this season, called a Feria. Its rank, “Greater Non-Privileged Feria,” means it is an important weekday celebration within Ordinary Time’s structure of ferias but does not carry the special liturgical privileges of solemnities, feasts, or privileged ferias that can displace other observances. There is no octave or special vigil attached to this specific day.

Introit (Daily Prayer)

Phil. 4:4-6
Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say, rejoice. Let your moderation be known to all men: for the Lord is near. Have no anxiety, but in everything, by prayer let your petitions be made known to God.
Ps 84:2
You have favored, O Lord, Your land; You have restored the well-being of Jacob.
Glory Be to the Father…

Lend Your ear to our prayers, O Lord, we beseech You; and brighten the darkness of our minds by the grace of Your coming.
Who livest…

Weekly Prayer

Weekly prayer content will appear here once it is scheduled.

Weekly Formation

God’s Design for the Body and Marriage

Sins Crying to Heaven

Grave rejection of God’s design for the body and marriage
The traditional referent is a deliberate bodily union between persons of the same sex. Traditional teaching calls it a sin that cries to heaven because such an act rejects the generative order God placed in bodily union and marriage.

The Seven Capital Virtues

Chastity
Chastity is the virtue that orders the gift of the body and its powers according to God’s design and one’s state in life. It preserves personal dignity, faithful love, and rightful boundaries by bringing desire under reason, grace, and charity.

Saint & Feast

Principal celebrationCalendar title

Thursday of Week 3 of Advent

A biography or feast reflection has not yet been prepared.

Today in Church History

Excommunication of Henry VIII by Pope Paul III
1538Schism Heresy
In 1538, Pope Paul III excommunicated Henry VIII, a significant act that underscored the tensions between the English monarchy and the Catholic Church. This event marked a pivotal moment in the English Reformation, as Henry's break from Rome led to the establishment of the Church of England, altering the religious landscape of England and impacting Catholicism profoundly.
The excommunication serves as a reminder of the importance of fidelity to the Church's teachings.

Catechism

Catechism of the Catholic Church

In the Catechism, we learn that Jesus gave the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples and to the Church when they asked him to teach them to pray. With the seven petitions preserved in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the Our Father is the fundamental Christian prayer and truly a summary of the whole Gospel. It can stand at the beginning of our prayer as the foundation for the particular needs and desires we bring to God. The Church’s liturgical tradition also surrounds this prayer with a doxology, expressing praise to God. Rooted in the Gospel and placed at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, the Our Father lets Jesus shape our desires and teaches us to ask for the new life he gives. As we pray it each day, we can ask the Lord to form both our prayer and our lives in him.

The Lord’s Prayer, taught and given to us by Jesus, is truly unique: in its words, the Son gives us the words he received from the Father, and he reveals the needs of his human brothers and sisters. It is not a formula to repeat mechanically. Through God’s Word, the Holy Spirit teaches God’s children to pray to their Father and makes these words “spirit and life” within believers. From the Church’s beginning, Christian communities prayed the Lord’s Prayer, and it remains deeply rooted in the Church’s liturgical prayer. In Baptism and Confirmation, it is handed on as part of new birth into divine life; in the Eucharist, it is prayed by the whole Church and anticipates the Banquet of the kingdom. As we pray it together, we can do so in hope, looking eagerly for the Lord’s return.

¶ 2764

The Sermon on the Mount is teaching for life, the Our Father is a prayer; but in both the one and the other the Spirit of the Lord gives new form to our desires, those inner movements that animate our lives. Jesus teaches us this new life by his words; he teaches us to ask for it by our prayer. the rightness of our life in him will depend on the rightness of our prayer.

Today's Mass Readings

Open the day's Sancta MissaDivinum Officium · Divino Afflatu - 1954View readings

Thursday of Week 3 of Advent

Understanding the Day

Introit (Daily Prayer)

Collect

Weekly Prayer

Weekly Formation

God’s Design for the Body and Marriage

Sins Crying to Heaven

The Seven Capital Virtues

Saint & Feast

Thursday of Week 3 of Advent

Today in Church History

Excommunication of Henry VIII by Pope Paul III

Catechism

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Today's Mass Readings

Baltimore Catechism No. 3