Category Archives: Lent and Holy Week

This weekend marks 18 days since the start of Lent, almost halfway to Easter, and a good time to consider how well the disciplines we’ve chosen for ourselves are helping us prepare. Recently, I read an article by J.D. Flynn, a Catholic journalist and one of the founders of The Pillar, who wrote about howContinue reading “Being Last for Lent “

This Sunday evening (3/5) we will begin our parish’s 3-day Lenten Mission.  Lent is the season when we take up in a more serious and intentional way the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  In my experience, it’s hard to engage these disciplines on our own.  It’s helpful when we give up dessert asContinue reading “Parish Mission “

Ready or not, it’s almost Lent.  February 22 is Ash Wednesday, so if you haven’t given any thought to what you’ll be doing for Lent, now’s the time to start. If you’re wondering what we’ll be doing in the parish for Lent, below is a list of things in our calendar that we’re encouraging peopleContinue reading “What Are We Doing for Lent? “

This weekend we enter Passiontide, the final phase of the Lenten season, during which we traditionally veil statues and holy images in our churches until the Easter Vigil.  I recently came across a poem by John Hart entitled, “Veiled Images at Passiontide,” which contemplates this ancient custom.  A purple kite  against the wall  with theContinue reading “Behind the Veil”

Lent 2022 kicks off this Wednesday, when together we will begin another 40-day pilgrimage to Easter. It’s about this time every year that we start giving some thought to what our Lenten discipline will be, that is, what we plan to give up for Lent.  Traditionally, Catholics are called upon to do three things duringContinue reading “Lenten Disciplines”

Msgr. Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) was an Italian priest and professor of theology, who spent many years teaching in Milan but who is best known as the founder of the Communion and Liberation movement.   When he died in 2005, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) preached his funeral Mass, saying: “[Msgr. Giussani] understood that Christianity is not an intellectualContinue reading “Easter”

It is part of the human experience that when we do something enough times it becomes second nature to us.  When it’s a good pattern of behavior, we call it virtue.  It’s it bad, we call it vice.  Even things that seem complicated and difficult at first can become, over time, so much a part of us thatContinue reading “Hosanna”