Catholic Family Devotions

Understanding the Day

Season

Advent

Week

Week 3 of Advent

Rank

Weekday

Ember Friday in Advent (Feria VI Quatuor Temporum in Adventu) falls during the season of Advent, the Church’s quiet, expectant time of preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas. Advent focuses on watchfulness, prayer, and readiness for the Lord’s arrival—both in remembrance of the Nativity and in hopeful expectation of his final coming. The rank “Greater Non‑Privileged Feria” indicates this is a weekday observance of significance: it is more solemn than an ordinary weekday but is not a feast, solemnity, or privileged weekday that would displace higher celebrations. As an ember day, it belongs to the traditional quarterly times of fasting, prayer, and penance; Ember Fridays typically emphasize penitential practices and special prayers for the clergy and the fruits of the earth.

Daily Prayer

The Introit for this day has not yet been generated.

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

Ember Friday in Advent

A biography or feast reflection has not yet been prepared.

Customs & Fasting

Traditional fast · Complete abstinence

Traditional Advent Ember Friday fast and complete abstinence.

Today in Church History

No Church history reflection has been prepared for this date yet.

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