Happy Lent!
It was good in spite of the rain to see so many on Ash Wednesday at the different Masses. I pray this will be a time for all of us to grow closer to the Lord!
In particular, I ask you all to begin praying for four Moms who all have children at our parochial school who will be baptized or received into our Church at the Easter Vigil in a few short weeks. Lent was originally started as a very focused time for those who sought to become part of the Church. The rest of the Church supported them with food, care for their families, good example, and prayer.
Now in this time, we are called to present good models of how we pray and live our lives to support them and to pray for them.
We are asked to pray for many things! This past week we witnessed another tragedy of several lost in an avalanche. We are constantly praying for an end of wars and for those who are sick. I do remind you that your prayers work (didn’t I say please pray for rain two weeks ago?). But Lent is a time when we persevere even more with focus.
My friend, Msgr. Arthur Holquin, a retired priest of the Diocese of Orange has some excellent words to focus us on the opportunity and meaning of these Lenten days for all of us.:
“In the ancient Roman tradition revived by Pope John XXIII, the Pope does not simply appear at the stational church on Ash Wednesday — he walks there. The penitential procession begins at Sant’Anselmo all’Aventino, the Benedictine abbey on the Aventine Hill, and moves on foot down to Santa Sabina, just a short distance away on the same hill. Pope Leo XIV honored this tradition this year. That walk, brief as it is, captures the grammar of Ash Wednesday in a single gesture: movement. We move from where we are to where God is calling us.
And so, the ashes themselves are not the whole story. They are a symbol, yes — of mortality, of creaturely frailty, of the dust to which we shall return. But the formula spoken as they are imposed tells us something equally important. The minister says one of two things: either “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” — which is a summons forward, into the good news — or “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” — which is a summons inward, into honest reckoning with who we are. Both formulas are movements of the spirit.
Lent is, at its ancient root, a season of preparation for baptism. The elect — those about to be initiated into the Body of Christ at the Easter Vigil — are entering the final stretch of their journey this week. But the Church wisely extends that same invitation to all of us because conversion is never a once-and-for-all reality. It is lifelong. Every Ash Wednesday is an invitation to begin again — not because we have failed, but because beginning again is itself the shape of a Christian life.
Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These are not three separate disciplines. They are one integrated posture of the heart turned toward God. As Paul writes to the Corinthians today, “Now is the acceptable time.” Not someday. Now. The ashes mark the beginning. The walk from Sant’Anselmo to Santa Sabina marks the direction. And the forty days ahead are ours to walk.”
May our individual and communal Lenten practices ‘move us to where God is calling us.’