In Catholic life, Advent is a perfect time for preparation. For the fourth year in a row, the Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN) will be organizing the Advent Simplicity Challenge, an online effort that encourages Catholics to live intentionally this Advent to positively affect the environment. Through the St. Louis U. High Global Citizenship and Sustainability Committee’s outreach with the project, members of the SLUH community have the opportunity to take part.

The ISN has put together an online Advent calendar; each day features content that helps participants consider how their choices as consumers affect the environment. Content includes daily topics of reflection, educational facts or videos, questions that can be used to quiz yourself on sustainability, videos about consumerism, topics for family discussion, and even challenges that involve the repurposing of old objects in order to minimize household waste. If participants sign up, they have the option to receive emails to notify them whenever a new day is released.

“(The main goal is to) get people to try to look and think about how we enter into the Christmas celebration of Christ's birth and the season of Advent, by looking holistically at ourselves and how we receive aid in our society and our economy,” said social studies teacher Anne Marie Lodholdz. “It’s almost like an inverse Advent calendar … it tries to get you to focus in different ways on removing things in a way that allows you to focus on the things that are really important.”

The Advent Simplicity Challenge is an extension of the broader Ignatian Carbon Challenge, which has provided opportunities for Jesuit-based involvement in environmental change since 2015 throughout the calendar year. The idea is based on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si, in which he calls Catholics to become responsible stewards of creation. Amidst this, the Advent Simplicity Challenge serves the specific purpose of connecting a holiday season that has become centered on consumption to the simplicity that Christmas began with.

“Oftentimes, (Advent calendars and Christmas) are ‘let me give you more stuff ’ … I like a lot of things, but it also kind of eats away at the purpose: to quiet yourself and focus on what the true meaning of Christmas is, which is actually a lack of stuff; our Savior came into the world and had so little stuff that he was born in a barn, so that’s the total opposite,” Lodholz said.

Everyone in the SLUH community, including parents, alumni, students, and teachers, has the opportunity to take on this challenge for themselves. You can take part by visiting the ISN’s website, ignatiansolidarity.net, and clicking on the Advent Simplicity Challenge, where you can find clear challenges and ideas for simplification to make a more responsible environmental impact this holiday season.

“What I like about it is that it’s not (too challenging); it’s not a huge out-of-the-realm reality,” explained Lodholz.