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Lent Is Not Just About You and Me, or

The Here and the Now,

It Is About Our Eternal Destiny!

Lent is a time to take a serious look at our relationship with God. It is a time to train ourselves to more earnestly seek God through reflection, prayer, and sacrifice. Some miss the whole point of lent by turning it into a time of self-improvement or self-realization, rather than a time to deepen our union with God. It is not just about now, but eternity. Example: We fast not to lose weight, but to become less attached to the things of this mortal world, and to more fully enter into the mystery of God’s love for us and God’s ways.

This year lent is early. It begins this Wednesday, February 6^th, (Ash Wednesday), a day on which Catholics cut back on their food (fasting), and abstain from meat (abstinence). It is a day on which we anoint our selves with ashes, and remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Ash Wednesday is a day to really give thanks that dust is not the end.

As Christians, we know, in faith, that the dust of death is really a beginning. During lent we remember that we have been saved from death’s terrible fate by Jesus, the Son of God. Lent is a time to appreciate God’s love for us, and to deepen our union with the God who created us, became one of us, and died for us.

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This year’s Lenten Message reflects on the practice of almsgiving, which represents a specific way to assist those in need and, at the same time, an exercise in self-denial to free us from attachment to worldly goods.

Message for Lent 2008

1. Each year, Lent offers us a providential opportunity to deepen the meaning and value of our Christian lives, and it stimulates us to rediscover the mercy of God so that we, in turn, become more merciful toward our brothers and sisters. In the Lenten period, the Church makes it her duty to propose some specific tasks that accompany the faithful concretely in this process of interior renewal: these are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. For this year’s Lenten Message, I wish to spend some time reflecting on the practice of almsgiving, which represents a specific way to assist those in need and, at the same time, an exercise in self-denial to free us from attachment to worldly goods. The force of attraction to material riches and just how categorical our decision must be not to make of them an idol, Jesus confirms in a resolute way: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Lk 16,13). Almsgiving helps us to overcome this constant temptation, teaching us to respond to our neighbor’s needs and to share with others whatever we possess through divine goodness. This is the aim of the special collections in favor of the poor, which are promoted during Lent in many parts of the world. In this way, inward cleansing is accompanied by a gesture of ecclesial communion, mirroring what already took place in the early Church. In his Letters, Saint Paul speaks of this in regard to the collection for the Jerusalem community (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15, 25-27).

2. According to the teaching of the Gospel, we are not owners but rather administrators of the goods we possess: these, then, are not to be considered as our exclusive possession, but means through which the Lord calls each one of us to act as a steward of His providence for our neighbor. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, material goods bear a social value, according to the principle of their universal destination (cf. n. 2404)

In the Gospel, Jesus explicitly admonishes the one who possesses and uses earthly riches only for self. In the face of the multitudes, who, lacking everything, suffer hunger, the words of Saint John acquire the tone of a ringing rebuke: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” (1 Jn 3,17). In those countries whose population is majority Christian, the call to share is even more urgent, since their responsibility toward the many who suffer poverty and abandonment is even greater. To come to their aid is a duty of justice even prior to being an act of charity.

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Lent Is Not Just About You and Me, or
The Here and the Now,
It Is About Our Eternal Destiny!

Lent is a time to take a serious look at one’s relationship with God. It is a time to train ourselves to more earnestly seek God through reflection, prayer, and sacrifice. Some miss the whole point of lent by turning it into a time of self-improvement or self-realization, missing the whole point of lent which is union with God. It is not just about now, but eternity. Example: We fast not to lose weight, but to become less attached to the things of this mortal world, and to more fully enter into the mystery of God’s love for us and God’s ways.
This year lent is early. It begins this Wednesday, February 6th, (Ash Wednesday), a day on which Catholics cut back on their food (fasting), and abstain from meat (abstinence). It is a day on which we anoint our selves with ashes, and remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Ash Wednesday is a day to really give thanks that dust is not the end.
As Christians, we know, in faith, that the dust of death is really a beginning. During lent we remember that we have been saved from death’s terrible fate by Jesus, the Son of God. Lent is a time to appreciate God’s love for us, and to deepen our union to the God who created us, became one of us, and died for us.
Let us pray for each other as we journey through lent together, and join our own sufferings to the Cross of Christ for the world’s salvation.

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The fourth commandment tell us that we should honor our father and mother. It is good to be lovingly reminded of what this means, as a parent ages. Here is a little video that is sure to touch your heart: http://parentswish.com/site01/big.html

Strange as this title may be, it does not condone sin, but points to moments of conversion. The following is an excerpt from an email sent by Sr. Joan Chittister to subscribers to Benetvision.

“It is not that sin is not sin. It is simply that sin is not the end of the world?and, in fact, may actually be the beginning of a number of things that can be gained hardly any other way in life and without which life is a pitiful place. A bout with greed may be precisely what teaches us the freedom of poverty. A struggle with lust may well be what, in the end, teaches us about the real nature of love. A strong dose of anger may be what it takes to teach us the beauty of gentleness.

There are, in other words, things to be learned from sin. One is compassion. Another is understanding. A third is humility. A fourth is perception. Without the ability to own our own sins, these qualities are all hard to come by indeed.

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It is hard to appreciate or visualize the vibrancy of the Catholic Church in Africa. This little youtube video speaks a thousand words about what is happening in terms of conversions, vocations, liturgy, age of congregations, etc.. I believe it was taken in the Sudan, and it illustrates the dynamism of the faith, and causes one to wonder how this will impact the universal church. The faith is definitely young and alive in this part of Africa as portrayed in the video – it is indeed a thousand words.

Author of the American Papist lamented in a recent post: “Too cruel? I’m sorry. I just can’t believe Italians got mad that the Pope told them to clean up their city.” Read the full story

“My grandfather”, Cardinal Husar says, “was a priest, and other members of the family were priests; some were married, others were not.
If a person is good, he will be a good priest, and this does not depend on the fact that he is married,” Read full story