Greetings in Christ!
I can’t believe I’m typing this, but this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday…holy cow, time flies!
It is my fervent hope that you and I strive to make this our best Lent ever: sacrificing our time, our resources and disciplining our bodies so that we can allow Jesus to remake us into a better image of Him to the world.
We push ourselves to more prayer. If you don’t regularly attend Mass, commit to Mass at least once a week. If you regularly attend weekend Mass, commit to adding a weekday if possible. If your family doesn’t pray together, add a simple prayer together every night. Whatever you and I currently do for prayer, during Lent, we push ourselves toward more prayer.
We push ourselves to be more generous.
Whether it’s the poor or our parish, we do ourselves and the recipients of our generosity a world of good when we sacrifice. I’ve been asked “How much should I give to the Church?” and I tend to respond “What is what we do worth to you?” We employ dozens of people, we help an amazing amount of the poor and vulnerable and we make worshiping God and reconciling with Him our top priority: what is the value of that to you? Some can’t give any money right now and can give time. Some can give money but can’t give time. Some can give both, some can give neither. That’s life. Pray and let God guide you and then choose to be at peace.
I want to share something crazy with you as an example of how we should give, no matter how little we think it is.
If every family that currently does not donate decided to give $7.50 a week, that would add $500,000 to our donations each year.
That’s money we can use to care for more vulnerable and poor people. That’s money we could use to address the innumerable repairs needed to our buildings and grounds. That’s money we can use to continue our fight to make Catholic education affordable for all. That money would make a radical difference.
We push ourselves toward discipline. As Catholics, we understand that the human person is a body/soul unity. We understand that our bodies are very loud and our souls are very quiet. During Lent, we strive to discipline our bodies so that we can better hear our souls. We let our bodies know that we are in charge, not our desires, hungers or emotions. Fasting is a great way to do this for those who are able: Let’s give that a good go.
These are the ways we are called to be challenged this Lent. Let’s give it all we have and make it the Best Lent Ever.
As a parish, we are going to be walking through The Activated Disciple together during Lent. This is a great, easy-to-pray book that offers us daily meditations and exercises. We bought a whole bunch of these and are going to ask each family to take one. If you are able to help pay for them, great, please do so. If not, do not worry about it at all. I urge us to do these together as a family every night or morning. Fr. Le and I will be using the book for our homilies all during Lent.
During Lent, we go to Confession.
Between St. Mark and Holy Family, we offer 10 hours a week of the beautiful sacrament of reconciliation. Even with that, we understand that sometimes, it just doesn’t work out. As a result of that, we are offering 12 straight hours of Reconciliation on March 22nd at Holy Family.
A couple notes on Confessions:
Please be conscious of our limitations as priests. I don’t think we’ve ever not finished the lines, but sometimes, people walk in at the last minute and get mad that we do not get their confession in. It’s my belief that we offer a lot of confession times and because of that, I ask you to accept that coming in at 5:55 for confessions that start at 5 and end at 6 might be asking a bit much.
Please be nice to our ushers for confessions: they know the priests schedule and volunteer to guide the process. Sometimes, they simply have to stop people from getting into line. Other times, they have to remind the people in line to keep their confession crisp. They are not doing this randomly, they are trying to balance the priest’s schedule with making sure we get everyone through the line.
I also ask us to be conscious of moms with little ones in line or with the elderly. Don’t hesitate to move those folks to the front of the line if you are able. It can be tough for them to wait so long and it’s a nice thing for a Christian to do.
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