Pope Benedict\u2019s Childhood Letter Inspires Today\u2019s Advent Resolutions 10 prominent Catholics offer ways to tap into the wonder of a child this Advent. In 1934, a young 7-year-old Joseph Ratzinger penned a letter to Jesus requesting threee gifts for Christmas. \u201cDear Baby Jesus, you will soon descend to earth,\u201d the words written in German read. \u201cYou want to bring joy to children. You will also bring joy to me.\u201d The young Ratzinger, who would one day be pope, concluded: \u201cI would like a Volks-Schott, a green chasuble, and a Heart of Jesus. I always want to be good. Greetings from Joseph Ratzinger.\u201d The words were written just before Christmas, during Advent in an era that seems light-years away from the flood of Christmas music that has been on the airwaves since the day after Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday deals. As Mary FioRito of the Ethics and Public Policy Center told the Register: \u201cI am old enough to remember my mother being aghast when our local department store was fully decorated for Christmas the week after Halloween. \u2018It\u2019s not even Thanksgiving!\u2019 she said. I can\u2019t imagine what she would have thought about the current commercial Christmas, which now begins in September. So how do I try and observe Advent while the outside world is celebrating Christmas (and beyond)?\u201d FioRito recounted a homily given by a much older Ratzinger, then Pope Benedict XIV, given on the first Sunday of Advent in 2009: \u201cDear friends, Advent is the season of the presence and expectation of the eternal. For this very reason, it is in a particular way a period of joy, an interiorized joy that no suffering can diminish. It is joy in the fact that God made himself a Child. This joy, invisibly present within us, encourages us to journey on with confidence.\u201d And it\u2019s this \u201cinteriorized joy\u201d that allows the \u201chappiness of Christmas to continue long past the holiday sale aisle at Target. Preparing for the jolt of the new year and to \u2018journey on with confidence\u2019 can be easily achieved by a good Advent.\u201d As we try to tap into the wonder of a child during this period of joyful hope, the Register asked several prominent Catholics about their own liturgical resolutions as they journey on during this second week of Advent. Sometimes it begins where one started before. Father Bryce Sibley has given himself the task of finally finishing a book,The Coming of God by Sister Maria Boulding. \u201cI\u2019ve tried to get through it in previous Advents, but have never been able to finish,\u201d Father Sibley said. \u201cThis year I have great hope that I will make it to the end!\u201d With a new book out this year, Catholic convert, author and mother of three Leah Libresco said, \u201cAt our home in Advent, I\u2019m trying to take up a little more spiritual reading,\u201d she said, adding that she is making her way through Father Alexander Schmemann\u2019s Our Father. With her new book, The Dignity of Dependence selling hot off the shelves this winter, she is also trying to \u201cpractice living within limits,\u201d which includes trying to go to bed by 11:30 p.m. at the latest (which is no small feat with three little ones to settle!). Serving a parish with more than 11,000 parishioners and nearly 4,000 families, Father Bjorn Lundberg is always extremely busy during the year at Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Winchester, Virginia, and even more so this year, as the parish just hosted the relics of St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux. \u201cSince we were blessed to have the relics come to our parish, I\u2019m trying to read a little bit more about the \u2018Little Way\u2019 in the context of Advent. I also like to read from the book Meditations on the Art of Waiting, by Mother Mary Francis, Poor Clare, during Advent.\u201d Helping families to experience the true season of Advent is of utmost importance to the priest in the Diocese of Arlington, especially \u201crediscovering the hidden secret of Advent,\u201d as Father Bjorn explained. \u201cWe just miss Advent as a culture. I try to use analogies to help them realize not to miss the sacred season. It\u2019s like celebrating the Super Bowl before you had the preseason games or your favorite team playing and getting to the playoffs. There are so many graces God wants to give us and how he wants to work in our hearts during this time of year. It\u2019s just a great time to let God work in your heart within, to help you discover more of his love for you. We try to convey that in different ways to the parish through preaching, through how we prepare the campus in the buildings in the church for Advent, how we approach decorating. Everything is kind of a gradual unveiling.\u201d In a practical but meaningful way, Dr. Ray Guarendi likes to reach out personally, writing cards to each of them. \u201cOne of my practices is to send out Christmas cards to people in my life who have meant a lot to me, presently and in the past,\u201d the host of The Doctor Is In on EWTN told the Register. \u201cAnd I make sure to fill the card with a handwritten note, letting them know how much I appreciate them.\u201d For the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, entering into Advent is always a celebration of sorts, as the founding of the order is marked on the First Sunday of Advent. Franciscan Sister Clare Hunter says the anniversary \u201calways sets the tone for Advent as a time of gratitude, awe and wonder at the call to bring Christ into the world through the \u2018birth\u2019 of our community in 1973.\u201d \u201cAdvent is a time to refocus on the mystery of preparation and anticipation of the incarnation of Christ born anew into our world. For almost 50 years, my community has made the seven days before Christmas, when the Church prays the O Antiphons, a time of deeper reflection, tradition and prayer in our convents around the world. Our chapels have special ornaments which symbolize each of the O Antiphons: O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Rising Dawn, O King of the Nations and O Emmanuel, and a reflection or presentation of the O Antiphon for the day is given by one of the sisters. This reflection is a creative meditation about the messianic title of Christ and includes a practical experiential suggestion to help enter more deeply into the mystery of the daily \u2018O.\u2019\u201d Catholic author and Scripture scholar Melissa Overmyer brings the season of waiting alive for her family \u201cby setting up Nativity sets as tangible reminders of Advent, anticipating his birth. We live in a bustling urban city, but over the years, I have collected a large, glowing white Nativity set that we display in our small front garden. It draws people from all over. It\u2019s unusual for our neighborhood, but night after night, it glows like a beacon of hope in the darkness.\u201d \u201cWe also create \u2018Gingerbread Cr\u00e8ches\u2019 with the neighborhood children,\u201d Overmyer told the Register. \u201cI turn prefabricated A-frame kits into edible reminders of the story we celebrate. These joyful, hands-on traditions, along with daily prayer, Mass, Scripture reading and Christ-centered music, help our family \u2014 and our neighbors \u2014 keep Christ at the center of Advent and Christmas. They remind us that amid the rush of the season, we are preparing not just for gifts and festivities, but to welcome the greatest gift of all: the birth of Our Lord.\u201d Lisa Hendey, formerly of CatholicMom.com and an author, invites others to pray with the mind of Mary and Joseph this Advent. \u201cI pray from the perspectives of Mary and Joseph and their remarkable \u2018Yes\u2019 to God\u2019s will for their lives. But I also love praying alongside the shepherds, the Wise Men, and all of those who would have been present in these remarkable moments. Advent is a time for me to slow down and go inward so that, after Christmas, I will be able to fully engage in whatever is in front of me with a heart and spirit that are ready to give God and those around me my very best.\u201d The Catholic Association fellow Leigh Snead says she has been \u201call over the Advent map,\u201d rushing out to buy a tree just after Thanksgiving to waiting until Christmas Eve, but she has now found a happy medium after 20 years of motherhood. And this year, she\u2019s adding a digital twist. \u201cFor us, that means we\u2019ll build gingerbread houses on the feast of St. Nicholas, have a family outing to pick out a tree and decorate with only the lights on the feast of Santa Lucia, and eat seven types of fish and seafood on Christmas Eve, while we finally adorn the tree with garlands and ornaments. Throughout the season, we encourage our children to secretly do nice things for one another and to give up some indulgences and little treats, save for the tiny chocolates in their Advent calendars. We light the wreath each night after dinner. This year, we\u2019ve decided to kick off our Advent with a modified technology fast: no video games for them, no mindless scrolling for me. Our Advent rhythm is now as much a part of our family traditions as the stockings embroidered with our names that grace our mantle each year. The intentional observation of the season of waiting for the birth of Our Lord and all the feasts of December provides all the inspiration you need to prepare your home and your heart for the joy of Christmas Day.\u201d As president of Christ Medicus Foundation and a father of two, Louis Brown has a busy schedule, but he finds Advent to be \u201ca joyful, penitential time to allow the Lord to prune us, to daily convert us to himself, and to prepare us for Christ\u2019s rebirth in our hearts and minds on Christmas.\u201d This year, he is \u201ctrying to pray the Rosary and pray brief spiritual warfare prayers first thing in the morning. My grandfather Oliver Nash, who was a convert to the Catholic faith, used to say: \u2018Keep the main thing the main thing.\u2019 The main thing for us as Catholics \u2014 more than work, money, professional advancement, or even our human relationships \u2014 is Jesus Christ. So putting first things first in our days is really helpful.\u201d \u201cSecond,\u201d Brown continued, \u201cdoing a weekly penance is really helpful for me spiritually and physically, to make room for God to be present in my body, mind and soul. I am an adopted son of the living God. Praise God! At the same time, I am a sinner deeply and desperately in need of God\u2019s grace and mercy. On Wednesdays and Fridays, I find it is a blessing to do some type of fasting. Depriving myself of some human food or beverage makes more room for God in my daily life, allows me an opportunity to do reparation and repent for my own sins, and reinforces that \u2014 my soul alive in Christ \u2014 is in charge of my body (and not the other way around).\u201d He and his wife Krista also \u201cdo a very brief morning offering together to reaffirm that Christ is the King and the Blessed Mother is the Queen of our family, of our domestic church.\u201d Being a true Tolkien fan, Brown also recommends delving into The Hobbit this Advent. \u201cI find these books and films are great leisure during the Advent and Lenten season because they remind us in profound ways that our greatness, as sons and daughters of God, is most potent in our littleness. They remind us that in being little children, that having great confidence in God\u2019s providence, we can be God\u2019s instruments of the most extraordinary things for our families, our communities and the world.\u201d This article was originally published by NCRegister. Receive the most important news from EWTN Vatican via WhatsApp. It has become increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channel today EWTN Vatican on WhatsApp Alyssa Murphy Would you like to receive the latest updates on the Pope and the Vatican Receive articles and updates from our EWTN Newsletter. 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