Greetings in Christ, all! After the noon mass today, I’ll be heading off with my family for a week. I’m very much looking forward to a time of prayer, rest, reading and baseball!
I’m writing this ahead of time, but wanted to be sure and remind you that Lent is coming! For us Catholics, this is a season where we take our prayer, good works and fasting up a notch so as to remind ourselves that our goal above all else is to be holy.
We focus our efforts on three things:
Prayer: we make a commitment to pray more during Lent. We pray individually, we pray as families, we pray as a community. Ask God’s spirit to rise up within you so that each day, you can give him just a couple more minutes. I often will tell people that five minutes of bad prayer beats an hour of no prayer.
Fasting: we abstain. This is an important discipline. A chance to remind our bodies that we are not ruled by our cravings. Whenever we hunger for what we’ve given up, pray “Lord, help me hunger for you like I hunger for this.”
Almsgiving/Good Works: we take our charity up a notch during Lent. Charity is a Latin word that basically means “love in action.” Decide to help financially or with our time and talents. Sacrifice that time for God and His Kingdom!
I get fired up for Lent. This is our Spiritual Boot Camp…our reminder that we are not made for this world, we are made for the next one. In this time of exile, God helps us sharpen our spiritual sword and polish up our spiritual armor so that we can be who He has made us to be.
I suggest that you sit down as a family within the next 7 days and formulate a personal plan and a family plan for Lent.
For the personal plan, take some quiet time and look at an area where you consistently miss the mark. Ask God into that sin and commit to that battle in a particular way during Lent.
When it comes to the family, sit together and ask how we can love each other more, how we can strengthen our bonds as a family. Then, ask God into your family in a deeper way, make commitments and gently hold each other to them.
As a family, look now at the penance schedule during the Lenten Season and decide when you are going as a family; don’t leave it up to going when you can, don’t leave it to the last minute, make a plan and stick to it!
You can decide as a family to pick one day each week to go to Mass together outside of Sunday or Saturday night.
Yep…I’m fired up and I hope you are too. Let’s embrace God’s grace and make this the Best Lent Ever.
God bless you…thank you for letting me serve you.
fjk
