Planning - First Sunday of Advent through Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Music Planning Pages
as featured in
1st Sunday of Advent (A) – 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
1st Sunday of Advent (November 30, 2025)
2nd Sunday of Advent (December 7, 2025
Immaculate Conception (December 8, 2025)
3rd Sunday of Advent (December 14, 2025)
4th Sunday of Advent (December 21, 2025)
Nativity of the Lord - Christmas (December 25, 2025)
Feast of the Holy Family (December 28, 2025)
Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (January 1, 2026)
Epiphany of the Lord (January 4, 2026)
Baptism of the Lord (January 11, 2026)
2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 18, 2026)
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 25, 2026)
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 1, 2026)
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 8, 2026)
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 15, 2026)
November 30 /First Sunday of Advent
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW YEAR is always a special occasion. Like birthdays or first days of school, we mark this First Sunday of Advent and the season it ushers in with out-of-the-ordinary cues: different colors and vestments; new ritual candles, books, and prayers; even a unique mood with songs sung only this time of year. Perhaps adorning extraordinary moments and seasons with exceptional actions is a way to express our hope for the ordinary days that follow. Advent prepares us to live the meaning of incarnation, which enters us more deeply into the Easter mystery of the cross and resurrection, which, in turn, becomes the lens for all the everyday moments. Jesus’s proclamation in
Hymnals
Cantemos Todos, Cantemos/ Together Let Us Sing Praises
Is Coming: Prepare the Way
today’s Gospel is a fitting reminder that “the Son of Man will come” (Mt 24:44) in the ordinariness of daily life—as we eat, drink, marry, and work.
Advent then is a wake-up call for Jesus’s disciples to an eschatological way of living in which we spend every moment doing the ordinary things disciples do, making each day an extraordinary moment of grace. As we begin Advent and this new year of Matthew, let us live now the vision we will find at this liturgical year’s end when the outcome of such an ordinary life in Christ is revealed: You, who gave me food and drink, clothed and welcomed me, come, inherit the kingdom. —DM
Morn
Awake, and Greet
We Celebrate Hymnal Missal
WS
Word and Song
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
Contemporary Music Resources
December 7 /Second Sunday of Advent
ISAIAH’S RADICAL “PEACEABLE KINGDOM” THAT WE proclaim today has been so romanticized in our religious art and imagination that its eschatological meaning gets lost. John the Baptist warned the Pharisees and Sadducees about thinking that repentance meant business as usual as long as you did the right outward actions. If we, too, immediately count ourselves among the innocent, safe from siding with vipers, we might mistake today’s prophetic vision of God’s reign as just a nice message for nice Christians instead of the world-upending self-examination it’s meant to be.
John the Baptist doesn’t fit into a gospel that simply promotes an absence of conflict, calling one to just “be kind.” In stark
Hymnals
appearance and striking language, he announces that something entirely new is coming, a different kind of community with a different way of being in right relationship.
The new thing about this community under Jesus is that it’s open for everyone. But if our response to the Gospel’s invitation is self-righteousness, then judgment, too, awaits. For in God’s kingdom, enmity is erased between mortal enemies by seating them one next to the other, eating from the same table, and navigating how to work, rest, and play with all their differences.
The fruit of this kingdom is not a superficial ceasefire that quickly rots but the good fruit of justice that takes courage, faith, and humility to cultivate. —DM
los Corazones
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
Muéstranos, Señor/Lord, Show Us Your Mercy: Sal 85(84)*
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
O Lord of
¡Oh Ven! ¡Oh Ven, Emanuel! (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel)
WC/M
We Celebrate Hymnal Missal
WS Word and Song
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
Suggestions
December 8
AS HUMANS WE HAVE BECOME ILL with shame. Many of us have spent much energy, time, and money healing from childhood trauma born of shame. There’s so much pressure, especially among younger generations, to deny any weakness or flaw and reveal only our most put-together selves to the world. And sadly, many succumb to the lie that shame and guilt have planted into human hearts: that we are irredeemable, unlovable, unworthy. Today’s solemnity confronts that insidious lie festering in human hearts since Adam and Eve. Today we proclaim that in God, humans are destined for holiness. Long before the garden and the serpent, God knew us and chose us to be blessed and
Hymnals
Buenos Dias, Paloma Blanca / Fairest Dove, Most Lovely Maiden
I Am for You
I Say Yes, Lord / Digo Si, Señor
I Sing a Maid
The Angel Gabriel
favored. And no human action will ever be shameful enough to undo God’s choice to destine us for blessing through Christ. This is what we commemorate today in Mary’s Immaculate Conception. From the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb, she is free of the sickness of shame and restored to wholeness so as to glorify God in the fullness of her human nature. She gives her complete yes to God’s divine invitation, not in spite of but because of her humanity.
Imagine how many more yeses to God’s grace would be possible if we helped one another heal from the lie of shame and see ourselves as God’s favored ones! —DM
OIF One in Faith CCH2 Catholic Community Hymnal 2nd Edition
WC/M
We Celebrate Hymnal Missal
WS
Word and Song
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!)
Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
Contemporary Music Resources
Find Seasonal and Sunday Choral Music Suggestions and Assembly Music Suggestions from our collection at
December 14 /Third Sunday of Advent
MANY ON THE FRONT LINES OF parish leadership have been questioning, wondering, retiring, or just leaving ministry (maybe even the church) altogether. They’ve seen too much false hope and hypocrisy and don’t know how much longer they can wait. Their daily prayer is some version of today’s question, “Are you the one?” Is this the parish that will finally feel like home? Is this the job that will fulfill and not deplete me? Do I still believe in the work I do to serve the church?
Especially in today’s polarized and suspicious climate, where the Gospel and Jesus’s words are often dismissed as political propaganda and one sometimes must assert “what kind of
Hymnals
Christian” they are, being a person of faith, much less joyful faith, has its risks.
Still, that is the Advent call—to rejoice in God’s reign here but not yet. We can find strength, then, in Jesus’s message to John. The work of bringing God’s reign is not ours to do; that belongs to the Spirit. But it is ours to witness.
Therefore, we must rejoice, for rejoicing is resistance to the belief that evil has won. When the world is broken, rejoicing helps us see the cracks of God’s reign breaking into the desert floor of despair. Rejoicing is a hope-filled battle cry: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God! —DM
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
December 21 /Fourth Sunday of Advent
IN DREAMS, TIME MOVES DIFFERENTLY. ON this last Sunday of Advent, we get a Christmas story, Matthew’s account of Jesus’s birth embedded as a flash-forward in Joseph’s dream. In our waking world, homilists and music ministers will constantly have to fight the urge to think sequentially and impose a linear lens upon the liturgical year, as if the seasons were a diary recording Jesus’s life: await his birth in Advent, celebrate his birth at Christmas, journey with him to Jerusalem in Lent, and mark his final days in the Triduum and Easter season. Advent comes, rinse and repeat.
The paschal mystery, however, into which we are immersed is not a sequential reliving of the past but an encounter with Christ
Hymnals
in our present moment. Our memorial of Jesus through the feasts and seasons gives us the lens through which we recognize how “God is with us” right now, drawing us deeper into God’s reign. From the beginning to the end of our days, God is indeed with us when and where we least expect, in ways that will not follow human and social conventions. Whether dreaming or awake, in days of sorrow or joy, awaiting the promise to come or seeing it already fulfilled, let us proclaim, in and out of season, that God is with us “until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). —DM
WC/M
We Celebrate Hymnal Missal
WS
Word and Song
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
Contemporary Music Resources
December 25 /Christmas
Hymnals
VIGIL [13]
Titus 3:4–7
Luke 2:15–20
[16]
Contemporary Music Resources
December 28 /Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Hymnals
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
Contemporary Music Resources
January 1 /Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God
Hymnals
Ángeles Cantando Están (Angels We Have Heard on High)*
de Lourdes (Del Cielo Ha Bajado)/ Immaculate Mary*
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
¿Qué Niño Es Éste? (What Child Is This?)*
January 4 /The Epiphany of the Lord
Hymnals
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
Contemporary Music Resources
January 11 /The Baptism of the Lord
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
= BILINGUAL
Contemporary Music Resources
Vayan
January 18 /Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
YOU MIGHT WANT TO SIT DOWN when I tell you that Lent is only 31 days away! With only five Ordinary Time Sundays this year between Christmas and Lent, there are several important rituals to consider celebrating in these coming weeks. If you have Christians ready to become Catholic, don’t make them wait until the Easter Vigil. Sadly, many parishes still do this—even for those who have been living the Christian way of life for many years!—thinking that reception of Christians is akin to baptizing catechumens. However, the church warns against this confusion: “Equating candidates with catechumens is to be altogether avoided” (OCIA 477). Initiation is a “journey of faith and conversion” (OCIA 4) to Christ. Those who have been validly
Hymnals
baptized, even in another tradition, have already taken that journey to Christ. This is also why the U.S. bishops say that “‘convert’ is reserved strictly for those converted to Christian belief and never used of those baptized Christians who are received into the full communion of the Catholic Church” (National Statutes for the Christian Initiation of Adults, Norm 18).
Let’s avoid putting up barriers and delays to full communion for our Christian sisters and brothers. And let’s watch our language when speaking of those already one with Christ in baptism. What better way to begin this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity! —DM
Contemporary Music Resources
WC/M
We Celebrate Hymnal Missal
WS
Word and Song
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let
Hymnal
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let Us Celebrate!) Missal
January 25 /Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO celebrate the Rite for Entrance into the Catechumenate, but not because Lent is a few weeks away. Pope Francis designated the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time as the Sunday of the Word of God. Connecting with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, this annual observance deepens our love for Scripture and reminds us of this common foundation we share with not only other Christians but also the Jewish people. In the Rite for Entrance, once a seeker has been consecrated to Christ through the signing of their forehead and senses with the cross, they are led into the church “to partake with us at the table of God’s word” (OCIA 60) as the people sing Psalm
34. Then there is an often-overlooked rubric at OCIA 61. After the new catechumens have taken their seats within the assembly, the presider says a few words to them about the dignity of God’s word. Then, “a book of the Sacred Scriptures is carried in procession and set in a place of honor and, as circumstances so suggest, may also be incensed.”
Through ritual, word, and action, these new catechumens who seek the Lord with us will be nourished by the living Word of God for the next full liturgical year as they taste and see the goodness of the Lord. —DM
Hymnals
Caminemos con Jesus / Let Us Walk with Jesus
I
= BILINGUAL
Contemporary Music Resources
We Celebrate Hymnal Missal
CEL/H
CEL/M
¡Celebremos! (Let
Missal
February 1 /Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
A FEW WEEKS AGO, WE LOOKED at celebrating the Rite of Reception during these weeks before Lent so baptized Christians becoming Catholic can be brought to the eucharistic table without delay. Today, you might also consider celebrating the confirmation of Catholics already sharing in the Eucharist.
Confirmation is another one of those rites that parishes often celebrate at the Easter Vigil because they see Easter as, rightly, the premier time for initiation. However, for baptized Catholics already sharing in Communion, confirmation is not the completion of their initiation. The sacrament that completes initiation—that is its fulfillment and climax—is the Eucharist. For Catholics already sharing in Communion, their confirmation is a
Hymnals
deepening of their bond to Christ’s mission into which they have already been fully united and are graced to carry out through their sharing in the Eucharist.
On Sundays of Ordinary Time, ritual Masses are permitted, so you could use the prayers for confirmation and change some of the readings. Today’s assigned Gospel reading, however, is already one of the options given for confirmation!
An important note to remember is that your pastor will need permission from your bishop to confirm any Catholics. So be sure to contact your bishop’s office early to request that delegation, or, if your bishop is open to it, invite him to celebrate the sacrament at your parish! —DM
CEL/H
¡Celebremos! (Let
CEL/M
Contemporary Music Resources
February 8 /Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
THERE IS ONE MORE RITUAL YOU might want to consider celebrating before Ash Wednesday, either today or next Sunday. That is the optional Rite of Sending Catechumens for Election.
The Rite of Election is “the focal point of the Church’s concern for the catechumens” (OCIA 107) because it is the turning point in their journey toward baptism. Taking place at the beginning of Lent, Election is usually celebrated by the bishop at the cathedral. The United States’ optional Rite of Sending allows the local parish the opportunity to give public testimony and prayerful support for their catechumens whom they desire to send for Election.
Hymnals
I Am Yours I
In the Rite of Sending, the godparents affirm the readiness of their companions through a series of questions to which they respond publicly. These questions as well as the godparents’ responses can be adapted so that the presider invites them to speak from the heart using their own words. For example, instead of simply responding with “They have” to the question of “Have they given evidence of their conversion?” it is so much more powerful to hear something like this: “Alice, as the godparent to Mary, please tell us how you have seen the Holy Spirit changing her heart and how she has responded.” If it’s possible, you could even invite other prepared parishioners to add their own testimonies. —DM
Hymnal
CEL/M
Missal
Contemporary Music Resources
February 15 /Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
THE SAYING ABOUT LITURGISTS IS OFTEN true: we are glorified furniture movers. But I wouldn’t trade this job for anything more conventional. Where else can you shape how people encounter the Divine every week or accompany them in prayer at their most vulnerable? Where is one expected to be a historian, poet, artist, and graphic designer; audio-visual engineer and florist; teacher, writer, and proofreader; skilled in conflict management and the art of removing wine stains and candle wax? When tragedy strikes, we are first responders. When words escape us, we are ready with a prayer, a song, and a ritual revealing the mystery of God we know is there.
Hymnals
Ours is the ministry of minutiae in service to the great cosmic narrative: that the infinite, unseen God would desire to be at the mercy of the human body for love of us. Perhaps that is why liturgists are deeply invested in the details and things of liturgy: because they concern our very bodies. Palms and ashes, vestments and candles, oil and fire, bread and wine, names inscribed and godparents chosen, fonts overflowing with water, and flowers that give their life for our joy.
As you prepare all these for the coming weeks, know that yours is a holy work, co-laboring with the Spirit, to help all creation do the sacred work of praise to the Father in Jesus. —DM
