Advent Prayers: The Wreath Blessing and a Prayer for Each Week

Advent 2026, week by week

The Church's calendar sets the start: “Advent begins with First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the Sunday that falls on or closest to 30 November and it ends before First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of Christmas” (Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar 40). November 30, 2026 is a Monday, so the closest Sunday is November 29. Christmas falls on a Friday.

The Gospel themes are those of the current Lectionary, as the Catholic bishops' Liturgy Office for England and Wales summarizes them. The weekdays from December 17 to 24 are a short season inside the season; the Norms say they “are ordered in a more direct way to preparing for the Nativity of the Lord” (Norm 42). That is when the O Antiphons are sung, below.

How to bless the Advent wreath at home

The rite is chapter 47 of the Book of Blessings, prepared by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (1989). Its introduction settles most of the questions families ask:

• When: on the First Sunday of Advent or on the evening before it (no. 1509). For 2026, that is Saturday evening, November 28, or Sunday, November 29.
• Who: at home it is appropriate for a parent or another member of the family to bless it, using the shorter rite (no. 1514). The wreath may be blessed by a priest, a deacon or a lay minister (no. 1516). A father does not need to bring it to the rectory.
• The wreath: by custom a circle of evergreen branches holding four candles, three violet and one rose; four violet or four white candles may be used instead (no. 1510).
• The candles: they stand for the four weeks of Advent, and the number lit matches the week; the rose candle is lit on the Third Sunday, Gaudete Sunday (no. 1511).

The shorter rite (nos. 1537–1540) has three parts. Here it is as a family uses it:

1. The Sign of the Cross and the versicle. All make the Sign of the Cross while the one leading says the opening line of Psalm 123:8, and all answer with the rest of the verse. In the Douay-Rheims: Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
2. A reading from Scripture. The rite's example is Isaiah 9, the light promised to a people in darkness. In the Douay-Rheims: The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen (Isaiah 9:2).
3. The prayer of blessing. A lay person says it with hands joined, not outstretched (no. 1539). The rite gives two prayers to choose from. Its English text is a copyrighted liturgical translation, so we do not reprint it here; it is printed in full in EWTN's library (Blessings for Advent). Read it from there, or from a parish copy of the Book of Blessings.
4. Light the first candle and pray the First Sunday's prayer below.

In church, the rubrics add, the wreath is blessed once, and on the later Sundays the candles are simply lit, with no further rites or prayers (no. 1513). At home, the next section is the whole of the weekly practice.

The four weekly prayers for the candles

For the home the Book of Blessings is specific: when the wreath is used at home, the opening prayer of the Sunday Mass is said as the candles are lit, and an Advent hymn and a Scripture reading may come before or after (no. 1515). The opening prayer is the collect. Below are the four Sunday collects of Advent as the Roman Missal of 1962 gives them. The Latin is the Church's; the English under each is our own plain rendering. If your family follows the Sunday Mass of the current Missal, the same instruction points you to that Mass's opening prayer, printed in your missal or missalette.

Three of the four begin with the same word, Excita, “stir up.” The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) quotes Cardinal Wiseman on it: “The Collects on three of the four Sundays of that season begin with the words, ‘Lord, raise up thy power and come’ — as though we feared our iniquities would prevent His being born.” The first and fourth echo a psalm: Stir up thy might, and come to save us (Psalm 79:3, Douay-Rheims).

First week · light one violet candle

Excita, quǽsumus, Dómine, poténtiam tuam, et veni: ut ab imminéntibus peccatórum nostrórum perículis, te mereámur protegénte éripi, te liberánte salvári.Collect, First Sunday of Advent (Roman Missal, 1962)

Stir up your power, O Lord, we pray, and come, so that under your protection we may be rescued from the dangers our sins hang over us, and by your setting us free be saved. Amen.

This one is spoken to Christ himself, the One asked to come.

Second week · light two violet candles

Excita, Dómine, corda nostra ad praeparandas Unigéniti tui vias: ut per ejus adventum, purificátis tibi méntibus servíre mereámur.Collect, Second Sunday of Advent (Roman Missal, 1962)

Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of your only-begotten Son, so that through his coming we may be found worthy to serve you with purified minds. Amen.

Here the prayer turns to the Father, and what is stirred up is no longer God's power but our hearts.

Third week (Gaudete) · two violet candles and the rose

Aurem tuam, quáesumus, Dómine, précibus nostris accómmoda: et mentis nostrae ténebras gratia tuae visitatiónis illustra.Collect, Third Sunday of Advent (Roman Missal, 1962)

Bend your ear to our prayers, O Lord, we pray, and light up the darkness of our minds by the grace of your visitation. Amen.

The run of “stir up” prayers breaks on the rose Sunday; this is a prayer for light.

Fourth week · light all four candles

Excita, quáesumus, Dómine, potentiam tuam, et veni: et magna nobis virtúte succurre; ut per auxilium gratiae tuae, quod nostra peccáta praepediunt, indulgentia tuae propitiatiónis accéleret.Collect, Fourth Sunday of Advent (Roman Missal, 1962)

Stir up your power, O Lord, we pray, and come, and help us with great might, so that by the help of your grace your merciful forgiveness may hurry on what our sins hold back. Amen.

The first week's words return, with one more plea added. It is also a fitting week to go to Confession before Christmas.

The O Antiphons, December 17–23

In the last days before Christmas the Church sings seven antiphons at Vespers, before and after the Magnificat. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) describes them as “The seven antiphons to the Magnificat in the ferial Office of the seven days preceeding the vigil of Christmas; so called because all begin with the interjection ‘O’.” Each one is “Addressed to Christ under one or other of His Scriptural titles” and ends with a plea for him to come. The Advent hymn Veni, veni, Emmanuel paraphrases some of them.

Three of the petitions, as the Encyclopedia gives them: “O Wisdom … come and teach us the way of prudence”; “O Adonai … come and redeem us by thy outstretched arm”; “O Key of David … come and lead from prison the captive sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.” At home, read the day's title after the collect and sing a verse of an Advent hymn.

Cardinal Wiseman, quoted in the Encyclopedia's article on Advent, heard the whole season as sighing with the Fathers of old for the Redeemer. The words he borrowed are Isaiah's: Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour (Isaiah 45:8, Douay-Rheims).

A father's plan for the dinner table

The Book of Blessings says the lighting of the wreath “may fittingly be included as a part of the evening meal” (no. 1515). Put that together and Advent at home takes about three minutes a night:

1. Saturday, November 28, at supper: bless the wreath with the shorter rite above and light the first candle.
2. Every night that week: before the meal, light the candles for the week and pray that Sunday's collect. Let a different child light them each night.
3. Add, when you can: one Scripture verse from the coming Sunday's readings and one verse of an Advent hymn (no. 1515 allows either, before or after the candles).
4. December 13: light the rose candle. The Third Sunday is Gaudete, “rejoice.”
5. December 17–23: add the night's O Antiphon after the collect.
6. The Joyful Mysteries: they center on the Incarnation and Christ's early life, which is why Ascension Press recommends them for Advent; pray a decade after supper one night a week with our visual Rosary of the Joyful Mysteries.

For the rest of the household's prayer through the year, our guide to Catholic family prayer shows how a father leads it, and the St. Andrew Christmas Novena is a second Advent devotion a household can keep beside the wreath.

What Advent is for

Advent is not a short Lent and not an early Christmas. The Church's own definition: “Advent has a twofold character, for it is a time of preparation for the Solemnities of Christmas, in which the First Coming of the Son of God to humanity is remembered, and likewise a time when, by remembrance of this, minds and hearts are led to look forward to Christ's Second Coming at the end of time. For these two reasons, Advent is a period of devout and expectant delight” (Universal Norms 39).

The Catechism says the same in one sentence: “When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior's first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming” (CCC 524). That is why the wreath's prayers ask Christ to come, not only to be remembered.

How old is it? The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) is candid: “It cannot be determined with any degree of certainty when the celebration of Advent was first introduced into the Church.” It records a synod at Saragossa in 380 that forbade anyone to be absent from church from December 17 to Epiphany, a synod at Mâcon in 581 that set a Lenten rite for Mass three days a week from November 11, and five Sundays of Advent in the Gelasian Sacramentary, which, it says, Pope St. Gregory VII (1073–85) reduced to four.