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22 Thoughts About Getting Ready for Lent

22 Thoughts About Getting Ready for Lent

Last updated on: November 30, 2022 at 1:12 am by Mark Wilson

22 Thoughts About Getting Ready for Lent 2022-11-30T01:12:44-05:00 Mark Wilson

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Don’t know what to give up this Lent.

Well here are some videos and quotes to get you ready to think about this great season.

Lent 2022 will begin on Wednesday, March 2
and ends on Thursday, April 14

Good Friday April 15
Holy Saturday April 16
EASTER April 17

Lent is not my favorite liturgical season. I’m an Advent-Christmastide gal. Lent is hard for me, but it’s meant to be. It’s okay to struggle because it’s through those sacrifices and struggles that we get a small taste of what Christ endured for us; of what true love is.Melissa Marie-Therese Cecilia@MelissaCeciliaG

I detest stereotypes. Just like the terms ‘C&E Christians’ is a stereotype, so also is the description of Catholics who may be inactive in church for most of the year but are certain to get ashes on Ash Wednesday and abstain from meat on Fridays of Lent. I find this very encouraging because it shows that, even if remotely, such people have not lost their Catholic identity; that their Catholicism remains ingrained in their subconscious. Nevertheless, it is also possible that Lent remains relegated to ashes and meatless Fridays. Lent is much more than ashes and meatless Fridays.

Lent is a time to enter the desert with Jesus. But why? We enter the desert with Jesus for the same reasons that Jesus entered the desert – to embrace our humanity and our divinity; to come to terms with the temptations that hinder us but also to recognize God’s grace in the midst of it all; to convince ourselves that “man does not live on bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4); to set ourselves firmly on the path to the new life that Easter promises; to be on the way to eternal life with God.

Jesus himself offers us the way to accomplish this goal. Once again, the scripture readings for Ash Wednesday are helpful. The gospel reading offers fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as practical ways in which to answer the Lenten call to conversation, transformation, and renewal.
Lent 2022: Don’t Let it Catch You by Surprise – Where Peter Is

For all its tomblike associations, Lent is rooted in the brightness of springtime. The word “Lent” is etymologically related to the word “lengthen,” referring to the lengthening of days as the world shakes off wintry darkness and turns to the dawn in the eastern, or Easter, sky. In spring, men enjoy a lengthening of days, increasing light, and an unveiling, or even remaking, of the world. Lent, as a time of penance and self-examination, is when creatures awake out of hibernation into the dawn of the world and the Word—when bones sing in their graves.

As Catholics suffer through Lent, so should they sing through Lent. The paradox of this cheerfulness, this happiness that is holiness, is nothing to hide. God gives the gift of joy to be shared, and Ash Wednesday—even as it openly marks the faithful—marks the beginning of a time to share openly, to give, and to make fellow sojourners who mourn, “Because I do not hope to turn again,” the courage to turn, to convert, happy and hopeful. Though you keep your left hand from knowing what your right hand is doing, do let your neighbor know that you are happy even in the boneyard of the world. This is the essence of Lent and the secret of Ash Wednesday.
–‘Shall These Bones Live?’ (crisismagazine.com)

This morning I happened to look at my Facebook Memories, and it just happens that five years ago today two friends of opposite political leanings each happened to post about praying for people on the other side from them. A conservative friend posted, “I should have prayed for President Obama more,” and a progressive friend posted about praying for a very rightwing public figure, Milo Yiannopoulos. And my thought was, “With Lent coming on, what a great examination of conscience: ‘Who makes me angry/bitter/contemptuous/disgusted/etc. that I ought to be praying for, or praying for more?’”

If you’re thinking about Lenten disciplines, one thing you might consider, if you aren’t doing it already, is reading the Mass readings before Mass. Here’s another: Make a list of people that you’re not inclined to pray for, and pray for them every day. Ask God to give you real charity for them: the love with which Jesus prayed for those crucifying him. Only through the love of God rooted in our hearts can we hope to be partakers of God’s Trinitarian life and be built as living stones in the spiritual house that is the church of Christ, with Christ himself as its cornerstone.
Homily: The hierarchy of truths and what matters most – Decent Films

So, there’s one resolution for you. Stop complaining. About everything. Including the fools and knaves appointed to govern us. Try, really try, to give it a break. Instead, pray for them, asking God to turn their minds and hearts to him. Saying over and over as you do, the words from the liturgy that Eliot recites at the end of section three: “Lord, I am not worthy / Lord, I am not worthy / but speak the word only.”

In other words, we need to make a serious effort to look at Lent from a higher angle. From the vantage point of Christ, that is, whose absence from our lives is the real reason for the season. “Where shall the word be found,” asks Eliot, “where will the word / Resound? Not here,” he tells us, “there is not enough silence.” And if there were enough silence in our lives, what then? Well, among other blessings, we’d certainly be spared a good many Lenten penances.

In Heaven, of course, there will be no reason for penance. None of the saints will be wearing sackcloth and ash amid the precincts of eternal felicity. But for now the Bridegroom having gone away, it is not unnatural that we mourn his absence, especially since it is largely due to our sins that we perceive him as absent. Let the wedding guests retire for a time to await in holy patience his promised return.

Do I Really Need Another Lent?| National Catholic Register (ncregister.com)

Every Ash Wednesday I think of them, those who’ve gone to the grave, no longer needing to remember the reality of human finitude we speak plainly each year on the first day of Lent. I think about those I looked at in the eyes and said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return,” and then commended at their gritty restoration, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I miss them.

I remember them even as I remember the One who gives us the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. I remember not only that I am dust and to dust I shall return, but I cling to the memory of those who’ve gone before me even as they have clung to the hem of my impotent garment. I remember because that cloud of witnesses gives me hope that I, too, might run the race set before me and that someone, someday, will wear symbolic sackcloth while wrapped in a band of resurrection white and pray I be recognized as a sheep of the fold of the Good Shepherd, a good and faithful servant who has finished her race.

–Jill Duffield, Lent in Plain Sight (2020)

At this time of year, all over the Internet, and especially on blogs and on Facebook, I see people talking about their intentions for Lent, and I recall the many times I was cautioned by an Oratorian, “Don’t lose the merit.”

This was one of the many little expressions that went to form a way of thinking about spirituality that I came to take for granted. It meant, simply, “Don’t talk about your interior life, or you will defeat the very purpose of your good works.” You will undo in your soul the work you are trying to accomplish. Keep your inner life — including your ascetical works — private. As private as the day-to-day intimacies of a marriage. As Gandalf said about the Ring of Power, “Keep it secret; keep it safe.”

We have become a culture of exhibitionists, endlessly broadcasting everything about ourselves both interiorly and exteriorly. Someone on a spy TV show I like recently quipped about Facebook and Twitter, “We used to have to spy on people. Now they save us the trouble.”

Something good for us to do for Lent might be to mortify this urge. To learn to interiorize Philip’s most memorable axiom and learn to keep it secret, and keep it safe.-“Don’t Lose The Merit”: Keep Your Lenten Sacrifices Secret and Safe – OnePeterFive

So, what are you doing for Lent?

I don’t like to talk about “What are you giving up for Lent?” because in my experience it puts me in the wrong head space. As if the spiritual life was primarily about getting rid of stuff instead of about being filled. Of course, you have to give things up in order to be filled; only the hungry can be filled with good things. The rich are always sent away empty, not because God hates the rich but because the rich have no room. But I’ve found that, for me, “giving things up” can lead to filling myself with more things that aren’t of God.

I decide, for example, that I’m going to give up chocolate– not just the good chocolate, but the crappy chocolate as well. No candy, no chocolate milk, no chocolate-covered granola bars. I clean out the cupboards and stuff all the chocolate in the freezer. It goes well for a few days. Then I start to crack. I dream about chocolate and wake up feeling guilty.

I’ve learned that penance doesn’t just mean giving something up. Penance means turning around. It means turning your gaze away from the idol and onto the icon– directing myself away from the object I’ve valued too much or in the wrong way, not to stare pointlessly into space but to set my sight on the Lord. Not to empty myself except in such a way that I’m filled with good things.

So, what are you doing for Lent?

What Are You Doing for Lent? | Mary Pezzulo (patheos.com)

During an exorcism, the demons that are present typically use vulgar language, blaspheme God, curse & lie.
As a Lenten practice, let’s examine our language.
In our conversations, do we imitate demons or do we imitate Christ?-Father Josh Johnson@frjoshjohnson

Indeed, the point of Lent is not merely that we should experience this life as Jesus experienced it, but that we should prepare ourselves for the unthinkable, transformed, divinized, resurrected, and glorified life of Jesus as he still experiences it in his risen form at this very moment. Lent is not about preparation for Easter eggs, nice clothes, and maybe a ham on Sunday. It is about getting ready to experience the shock and awe of the literal Resurrection of the Son of God; raised, touched, beheld, poked, prodded, dined with, breathing upon his disciples, cooking fish, appearing, disappearing, and being seen with the mortal eyes of some five hundred eyewitnesses.Mark Shea: Into the Desert- Reflections on Lent | The Catholic Weekly

Dear Catholics,

Please stop telling people to give up podcasts for Lent.

It hurts your little Catholic podcaster friends.

If they want a real penance, make them exclusively listen to Catholic podcasts.

And if they REALLY want a penance, have them only listen to @ForteCatholic

-Taylor Schroll@TaylorSchroll

Lent

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