Dear Advent Mission Members and Supporters,

In 10 short days, we will be engaged in another great mission for Christ, just a few days before Christmas.  Let’s make this mission our collective Christmas present to Him!

It has been a very volatile year, not just in the economy and the markets but in our culture and society, on an American level and even a global one.  More than usual, there has been an extraordinary level of divisiveness, hate speech, and violence (physical, verbal, emotional, and spiritual).  In 11 days, we will be on the streets of New York, pushing back against this tide, armed with little more than Love.   God coming into our world as one of us.   Jesus’ birth.  More info  |  Sign up

I would like to propose  this year, in order to make our little band even more effective,  that we “Prepare through Prayer”.  Specifically, I am asking all of you on this distribution list, whether you can attend the mission on December 19 in SoHo or not, to join me virtually each day in praying a novena to Saint Theresa of Lisieux starting Saturday morning December 10, through Monday morning December 19.  Here is the prayer:

Little Therese of the Child Jesus
Please pick for me a rose
from the heavenly garden
and send it to me
as a message of love.

O Little Flower of Jesus,
ask God to grant the favors
I now place with confidence
in your hands,

…that our Advent mission in SoHo will bring many more souls to Christ,  that we will collectively be effective instruments to perform His will, and that, above all, we will be humble and compelling witnesses of His love to the souls we encounter in New York this day.

St. Therese, help me to always believe
as you did, in God’s great love for me,
so that I may imitate your “Little Way” each day.
Amen

Please begin praying this prayer this Saturday, and please share it with others.  Saint Theresa of Lisieux is one of the most active saints in heaven intervening for us. Let’s call in this big gun, this “Little Flower,”

In Christ,
Steve