Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Short Advent Prayers
- Advent Prayers for 2024
- Daily Advent Prayers
- Advent Bible Verses
- Additional Prayers
Sometimes it feels as if we’re in a rush to speed through the calendar.
Pumpkin-flavored everything seems to be ubiquitous by Labor Day. Christmas decorations will start popping up on store shelves long before Halloween costumes fly off the shelves.
Advent challenges the hectic pace of our lives and the sometimes indomitable march toward Christmas. It gives us time to prayerfully remember Jesus’s birth and the majesty of the Incarnation while looking ahead to His second coming.
Advent prayers can help us focus on this important liturgical season when it seems like so many forces pull us from summer to Christmas Eve. Praying during Advent can help us keep in mind the true purpose of all of the build-up to Christmas.
Let Hallow enrich your prayer life this year with Advent prayers for 2024.
Short Advent Prayers
Advent is a relatively short liturgical season, so perhaps it’s fitting that short, simple prayers are all we need to feel God’s calming presence in our lives amid the many distractions of November and December.
Consider these brief Catholic prayers this Advent season:
- Dear Lord, please allow me to embrace Advent in the way the Church intends: as a way to prepare for Your arrival. May everything I do–every gift I send, every party I attend, every meal I share–remind me to prepare space in my heart for You. Amen.
- Heavenly Father, heal my heart during this season of Advent. Help me to love more fully. To forgive more generously. To wait more patiently for Christmas, embracing each day and hour knowing the joy that awaits. In Your name I pray. Amen.
- Lord, send down Your Spirit to guide me during Advent this year. May the Holy Spirit help me journey closer to You and lift me up when I feel down and led me when I feel lost. I may stumble at times, but I know my ultimate journey is to draw closer to You and build Your kingdom here on earth–a kingdom that Jesus’s birth, life and death helped secure. Amen.
- I pray for focus today, dear God, because during Advent, my mind and attention tend to wander. There are so many distractions, many of them well-meaning. But nothing gives my heart rest like resting in You. I pray that keep You at the focus of my day today, because I know the peace that only You offer. Amen.
Prayers for Advent in 2024
It’s been a challenging year for many of us for many reasons. Here are some prayers that may resonate during the 2024 Advent season:
- Dear Heavenly Father, this Advent season, we especially are in need of peace. War rages on in our world. It impacts the daily lives of millions in different ways. This year, as much as ever, we need Jesus, Prince of Peace, in our world and in our hearts. During Advent in 2024, we pray that Jesus transforms our world as we await His coming again.
- In his September 2022 homily during his journey to Kazakhstan, Pope Francis reminds us that God’s response to the spread of evil in the world was that He “gave us Jesus, who drew near to us in a way we could never have imagined.” Father, this Advent, we eagerly await Jesus drawing near to us again. In a world that can feel overcome by the sins of violence, poverty and injustice, we pray that we can be instruments of peace and healing in Your name. Amen.
Daily Advent Prayers and Meditations
The Hallow app offers dozens of simple daily prayers that are perfect for Advent, including the daily rosary, Bible in a Year, several different novenas and daily miracle stories.
During the four weeks of Advent, these daily prayers and meditations can help calm your heart during a season filled with distractions. Pray these prayers each day to draw close to God during Advent in 2024.
- God, be with me today. Help my heart be open to the ways Jesus is at work in my life. Amen.
- Give me peace today, O Lord. Help me to live this day in eternal hope knowing Jesus will come again.
- Heavenly Father, Give me the strength to have the same trust in You that Mary had, as she awaited the birth of Jesus.
- I pray for humility today, Father. Our Savior entered this world in a manger with animals. When I feel too proud, let me remember the Holy Family and Jesus’s humble birth.
Advent Bible Verses: Scriptures to Read During Advent
Spending time with Scripture is important to our prayer lives during all liturgical seasons. Hallow offers the daily Gospel and other Scripture-based meditations to guide your Advent meditations.
These simple Bible verses also resonate during Advent:
- Isaiah 40:3: “A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD ; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
- Isaiah 30:18: “Truly, the Lord is waiting to be gracious to you, truly, he shall rise to show you mercy; For the Lord is a God of justice: happy are all who wait for him!”
- Hebrews 6:15: “And so, after patient waiting, he obtained the promise.”
- Luke 1: 34-38: “But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.”
More Prayers
Let Hallow help you pray throughout the Advent season.