{"id":2869,"date":"2007-02-20T15:09:15","date_gmt":"2007-02-20T15:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/on-lent.html"},"modified":"2007-02-20T15:09:15","modified_gmt":"2007-02-20T15:09:15","slug":"on-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/on-lent.html","title":{"rendered":"On Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many resources in print and on the web. We have our favorite readings and meditations. We’ve got the Pope’s Lenten message to guide us:<\/a><\/p>\n

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They shall look on Him whom they have pierced<\/em>.\u201d Let us look with trust at the pierced side of Jesus from which flow \u201cblood and water\u201d (Jn<\/em> 19:34)! The Fathers of the Church considered these elements as symbols of the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Through the water of Baptism, thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, we are given access to the intimacy of Trinitarian love. In the Lenten journey, memorial of our Baptism, we are exhorted to come out of ourselves in order to open ourselves, in trustful abandonment, to the merciful embrace of the Father (cf. Saint John Chrysostom, Catecheses<\/em>, 3,14ff). Blood, symbol of the love of the Good Shepherd, flows into us especially in the Eucharistic mystery: \u201cThe Eucharist draws us into Jesus\u2019 act of self-oblation \u2026 we enter into the very dynamic of His self-giving\u201d (Encyclical Deus caritas est<\/a><\/em>, 13). Let us live Lent then, as a \u201cEucharistic\u201d time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed. Contemplating \u201cHim whom they have pierced\u201d moves us in this way to open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person; it moves us, in particular, to fight every form of contempt for life and human exploitation and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people. May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God\u2019s love given to us in Christ, a love that each day we, in turn, must \u201cregive\u201d to our neighbour, especially to the one who suffers most and is in need. Only in this way will we be able to participate fully in the joy of Easter. May Mary, Mother of Beautiful Love, guide us in this Lenten journey, a journey of authentic conversion to the love of Christ. I wish you, dear brothers and sisters, a fruitful Lenten journey, imparting with affection to all of you, a special Apostolic Blessing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As I said, we all have our favorite resources. I was struck this year by one of the booklets I was sent, this one from Creative Communications for the Parish – <\/a>one of my favorite places for parish resources since I was a DRE, not just because I write for them, <\/a>but because their materials have excellent content and are affordable.<\/em> <\/p>\n

They had the excellent sense to invite Fr. Robert Barron <\/a>to write their main Lenten devotional booklet, "Stay With Us Lord"<\/a>, and I was struck by the arresting simplicity and clarity of the entry for tomorrow, Ash Wednesday:<\/p>\n

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The Church traditionally says there are three things we ought to do during Lent, and I put stress on the word do<\/u>. I think in recent years we’ve emphasized the interior dimension a little too much: that Lent is primarily about attitudes, about ideas and intentions. In the traditional practice of the Church Lent is about doing <\/u>things, things that involve the body as much as the mind, that involve the exterior of your life as much as the interior.<\/em><\/p>\n

The three great practices of Lent — prayer, fasting and almsgiving — are three things you do. <\/u>This is going to sound a bit strange, but my recommendation for this Lent is, in a certain way, to forget about your spiritual life — by which I mean forget about looking inside at how your’re progressing spiritually. Follow the Church’s recommendation and do three things: pray, fast and give alms. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There. <\/p>\n

(The reason the interior dimension needed to be emphasized, I’d say, was because too many of us don’t exactly know why <\/em>we do all these things, and they run the risk of becoming Identity Badges rather than spiritual practices. But then we get all "your Lenten journey" and we tend to spiritualize ourselves out of actually doing <\/em>anything much at all. So Fr. Barron nudges the pendulum so it swings just a little bit back in the needed direction….and I’ll tell you that subsequent entries in the devotional do a lot to explain "why" in very clear practical language…He strikes just the right balance.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many resources in print and on the web. We have our favorite readings and meditations. We’ve got the Pope’s Lenten message to guide us: They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.\u201d Let us look with trust at the pierced side of Jesus from which flow \u201cblood and water\u201d (Jn 19:34)! 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}