Matej Sabo, head of the Eben Ezer Community and member of the Father’s Heart leadership team for Slovakia

Matej Sabo. Photo: private archive .

For our family, which also includes four schoolchildren and one teacher, Advent, or filipovka, an exceptional period of challenging struggle to calm down and prepare one’s heart for the holidays of the Nativity of God. The aforementioned gatherings, pre-Christmas concerts, end-of-year duties, etc. certainly play a role in this. 

These external circumstances, including the hectic atmosphere in shopping malls and stores, seem to push completely against what we all want to happen inside us. “Guard your heart very much…” (Proverbs 4:23) and “…enter your room, close the door behind you and pray to your Father…” (Mt 6:6 ) are highly topical invitations. Do I keep the inner peace in my heart or do I allow the whirlwind of external hectic to sweep me away? 

Personally, I already have enough experience with both scenarios and dare to say that if I don’t want to be a victim of circumstances, I need to plan how to guard my heart, make a decision and act according to this plan. In recent years, the advent digital sabbath has helped me a lot in guarding my own heart and quieting down, despite the external chaos. 

In short, it means turning off all screens, especially pocket ones. With the only exception – the work screen during working hours at the workplace. I also combine it with the decision to read something meaningful for the given period (this year, for example, we are reading the book by John Mark Comer in the community, Neuprosné ni zhonu), or some form of dietary discipline (Daniel’s fast, intermittent fasting…). 

If possible, it is ideal to enter these things together with a few people with whom we can constantly encourage each other. Whether it will be in the family (adolescent children already know how to face such a challenge), or in the community. The fruits of inner peace and joyful anticipation of Christ’s coming are certainly worth it.

Rafaela Zvrškovcová, provincial superior of the school sisters of St. Francis

Rafaela Zvrškovcová. Photo: private archive.

I look forward to Advent every year. In recent years, I have often associated with him the content of the song by ESPÉ Darkness falls , when the king with light comes to us. And this is what Advent is about for me – the more it is dark outside during this period, the more God draws closer to us through his Son with his light. 

I don’t want Advent to be just a period of strong resolutions for me, which many times I conclude at the end that it didn’t work out so well. I want to experience it as a gracious time when I can open my heart even more to God, so that he can touch it with his love, bring peace to it and illuminate what is still in the dark and hidden even from me. 

And this can be done even in the midst of ordinary duties, but especially in moments of silence and solitude, whether in the chapel, in my room, or outside on a walk, where I let the Virgin Mary accompany me while praying the rosary, because she knows best how to open the door to Jesus, after all, she did it with her fiat . So it’s all a matter of priorities. Certainly, also gifts, cleaning, work duties, which tend to be quite a lot at the end of the year, all this is important. But if I put God, who leans toward me, first, and subordinate everything else to that, then it only gets as much time as it needs.

I am begging myself and every person of good will to be able to bow before God, who did not hesitate to humble himself and become one of us. So that when we look into the childish eyes of little Jesus at Christmas, we enter into his light and embrace the fullness of love and peace. After all, each of us and our hurting world needs these gifts so much.

Andrea Mikolášiková, organizer of the Women’s Catholic Conference from the Between Heaven and Woman project

Andrea Mikolášiková. Photo:

Advent is a very special time for my husband and I, and we try to make it special for our family as well. While in some areas of life we ​​like to experiment, in others we like tradition. Celebrating Advent is one of those where we love tradition. For more than ten years, has been a supporting part of our advent .

Over the years, we make small changes – whether we have a real tree from the beginning of December or just branches in a vase, whether the children color the individual symbols or we have them handmade, the core remains the same. Every evening, as a family, we try to meet for at least a short time over God’s word and follow through a simple catechesis the history of salvation leading to the birth of Jesus Christ. In the morning, we get used to playing Advent hymns.

Our Advent also includes creative activities such as making candles from beeswax, bee wraps, soap making, baking for joy and the like. Neighbors like on St. We will surprise Mikuláš with a package and we are happy to support the kolkolasky.sk project.

As for the more prosaic tasks: we try to buy gifts already in November and in December just put in the last touches, we don’t do a big cleaning before Christmas, and since we celebrate Christmas at the family cottage with the extended family, we divide the shopping and cooking, we order cakes.

Milan Jaroš, Roman Catholic priest, chaplain of the Bratislava-Dúbravka parish

Milan Jaroš. Photo: private archive 

I like Advent very much. At the beginning of the new liturgical year, it is a beautiful time of preparation for the feast of the birth of our Savior. Since Advent is, in a certain sense, a very Marian season, I try to live it together with Mary, when I can mentally take her hand and let her lead me to Jesus and contemplate the incarnate word of God. I try, as it were, to penetrate more into the spirit of this period, whether through the liturgy, God’s word, or personal prayer.

We live in a time when we are in a hurry all year round, so at the end of the year there is maybe just a little more to do. Therefore, I constantly try to focus on what is essential. On God and your relationship to him. And in this, the Virgin Mary helps me a lot, from whom I can learn subtlety, hiddenness, love, peace, service and many other things in the hustle and bustle of the world. 

Especially during this time, it helps me to focus on service. Maria says that she is a servant of the Lord, and I, as a priest, am also a servant of the Lord, so as part of my service, especially during confession, I try to help people focus on what is essential, on Jesus and the relationship with him. 

It is customary to talk about Christmas as a holiday of peace. Our whole life is a struggle for peace. If we want to work towards true peace, we must go to its source, and that is Jesus – the prince of peace. This is what I strive for and sometimes I succeed more and sometimes less.

Lenka Bene, director of the association that covers Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in Slovakia

I like Advent very much. Although, of course, it is also associated with finishing everything left unfinished at work at the end of the calendar year and with pre-Christmas cleaning at home, it is also a time for me to think more deeply about the hope that goes beyond my ordinary life, and about Mary’s yes as an act of complete trust and obedience to God . 

I discovered that it is often just a matter of my decision, how much space I will give in Advent to the stress of completing tasks and also to my idea of ​​a perfectly cleaned and decorated house for Christmas, and how much I will keep for inner silence, rorats and thinking.

My service to children and adults in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd also helps me in a deeper spiritual experience . In the atriums with children, we devote a lot of time to Advent and preparation for Christmas. We start already in November and we talk about biblical geography – about the land of Israel, which was chosen by God for Jesus to be born, live, die and rise from the dead. We continue by reading selected messianic prophecies especially from the prophet Isaiah and the stories of the annunciation, the visit of Elizabeth and the birth of Jesus. 

At home, we have had an agreement for several years that we do not rush to buy gifts, each of us, including our children, receives only one gift under the tree as a symbol of the great love that God has for us. We bake cookies with the children just before Christmas and then exchange them with grandparents and friends. Sometimes we even have ten types.

In the village where we live, there are no regular Holy Masses, so a few years ago we started to pray early in the morning of Advent with a few people from our community to pray morning praises in the church by candles. It has a great charm, some of our children are already joining us, and it helps me personally to enter the new day with joy and perspective.

Jozef Husovský, poet, lyricist and aphorist, author of daily mini-reflections for the Christian Worl

For me, Advent always has the flavor of crunching snow under winter boots and lights penetrating the fog. What I experienced as a boy rushing to minister. That changed today. The lights and fog remained, only the snow was nowhere to be seen.

By writing thoughts for each day, I actually have a year-round Advent. And I like to read Richard Rohr, so I also have year-round antlers. (Smile.) So yes, Advent is a special season, but in my life it doesn’t just refer to the less than four weeks before Christmas.

As for pre-Christmas activities, if you do things continuously, you don’t have to finish big before Christmas. I’m not saying I always succeed, but I’d like it that way. 

And the second thing is that I don’t want a Christmas tree that wins international competitions. In addition, we have an agreement at home that we can treat ourselves to Christmas presents throughout the year. When I’m craving a book that came out in February, I’m not going to wait ten months to unwrap it from the Christmas wrapping paper. So we can give each other Christmas presents on an ongoing basis. And thank God, we are doing well.