Happy St. Nicholas Day!

We almost missed it, but daddy remembered at the last minute and the children awoke to shoes filled with chocolate coins and candy canes as well as a fairly random assortment of new Christmas books that St. Nicholas may or may not have picked up at the library seconds sale........

I've been praying the St. Andrew novena this Advent and if you haven't started it you should really jump on in!  Sarah at Amongst Lovely Things perfectly sums up everything you need to know, she says:

You know, I never pray the novena perfectly. Every year I miss days. I fall asleep. I forget. I'm human, after all, and so are you.

It's easy to slip into superstitious thinking, but we are Christians- we are not superstitious people. Chanting a prayer fifteen times a day for four weeks does not unlock some secret power or cause God to change His will.

Prayer doesn't change God at all. It changes us.

I've found this to be perfectly true already.  I began the novena fervently praying for my own intentions and now already my intentions don't seem as important as they did last week.  The prayer has become a meditation preparing my heart for Christmas and heaven knows I needed that.

Steeping ourselves in the Christmas novena helps us remember to trust that He is who He says He is. When we quiet our hearts and our worries long enough to ponder the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold, we are made ready for the miracle of Christmas.

Go read the whole thing!