Welcome to St Martin's Lent & Adventus30 2026

To You I lift up my soul: in You, O my God, I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. (Introit, First Sunday of Advent)

We rejoice with Holy Mother Church, we lift up our souls, as the excitement of the Christmas Season draws near. All around us, in the shops and everywhere, it seems to be already Christmas, but as faithful Catholics we know only that Christmas is near. A bit like the shops point out to us the necessity to ‘get ready, and get shopping’, for the Catholic the coming Penitential season of Advent points out to us the need to ready the “stable of our hearts”

Adventus30 is our little way to help us to live all the graces of this penitential season, and to ‘keep it real’ in a world that is more and more ‘virtual’ and less and less concrete. Our Lord is coming, let us go out to meet Him.

For many of us this penitential season that Holy Mother Church provides to us has, in past years, been overlooked. Once I even had some faithful ask me whether, truly, Advent was mean to be a penitential season. Well, indeed it is, and if no-one else chooses to live it, ‘me, and my family, we will serve the Lord.”

Adventus30 is a practical way to live out this wonderful season of preparation for the coming of Our Blessed Lord at Christmas. Consisting, principally, of a series of guided meditations, together with morning and evening prayers, the daily reading of the martyrology, and a specified prayer regime, you may find that this will be the first Christmas where the “reason for the season” has been made truly manifest to you. You will, if you sign up to Adventus30, have prayed, fasted, and prepared well the stable that is your heart, as the clouds rain down the just One this Christmas.

New this year - we will be posting daily meditations and martyrology readings beginning on Saint Martin's Day (November 11th) for those who would like to extend their time of prayer and fasting in preparation for the great feast of the Nativity, according to an ancient tradition of the church. Others may wish to begin the program on the First Sunday of Advent (29th November) as usual. Here is what Dom Prosper Gueranger says on the origins and practice of Saint Martin's Lent:

The oldest document in which we find the length and exercises of Advent mentioned with anything like clearness, is a passage in the second book of the History of the Franks by St. Gregory of Tours, where he says that St. Perpetuus, one of his predecessors, who held that see about the year 480, had decreed a fast three times a week, from the feast of St. Martin until Christmas. It would be impossible to decide whether St. Perpetuus, by his regulations, established a new custom, or merely enforced an already existing law. Let us, however, note this interval of forty, or rather of forty-three days, so expressly mentioned, and consecrated to penance, as though it were a second Lent, though less strict and severe than that which precedes Easter.

Later on, we find the ninth canon of the first Council of Mâcon, held in 582, ordaining that during the same interval between St. Martin’s day and Christmas, the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, should be fasting days, and that the Sacrifice should be celebrated according to the lenten rite. Not many years before that, namely in 567, the second Council of Tours had enjoined the monks to fast from the beginning of December till Christmas. This practice of penance soon extended to the whole forty days, even for the laity: and it was commonly called St. Martin’s Lent. The capitularia of Charlemagne, in the sixth book, leave us no doubt on the matter; and Rabanus Maurus, in the second book of his Institution of clerics, bears testimony to this observance. There were even special rejoicings made on St. Martin’s feast, just as we see them practised now at the approach of Lent and Easter.

The obligation of observing this Lent, which, though introduced so imperceptibly, had by degrees acquired the force of a sacred law, began to be relaxed, and the forty days from St. Martin’s day to Christmas were reduced to four weeks.

(Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, The History of Advent)

So let us begin. Please start at the Adventus30 intro which will help to guide your Advent with specific tasks, prayers and penances. Most of what you need to know can be found there. Look too at the Calendar (available on Desktop only) which neatly lays out the daily meditations and martyrology readings which you can click on. Don't forget the regular feature of the programme (the St. Andrew’s Christmas Novena) which begins this year on the saint's feast day, Monday 30th November. Please do not miss this opportunity to pray this powerful intercessory Novena.

And let us not, amidst all the requirements, fail to pray for each other and all of the intentions for which we offer up our participation in this wonderful little programme. 

God bless,

Adventus30 Team

Rorate Coeli desuper et nubes pluant iustum…