2/28/21 Lent 2021

February 21, 2021

RE: Lent 2021

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Greetings in Christ the Lord.

As we enter into this season of grace, we are invited to accompany our Lord in His fast of forty days and forty nights. Our Lord entered into the desert and overcame the temptations of the devil, the ancient foe. Now we join ourselves to Jesus in this holy time and we enter into the desert, the desert of a deeper, even stark awareness of the realization that our lives are in need of Jesus’ power.

It will only be by His grace at work in us that we will be able to make the changes needed to make progress in our holiness. Changing sinful habits and turning them into good ones (building virtue) is not easy, and it can even seem overwhelming. If we’re honest, we can all recognize behaviors or even ways of thinking that are sinful and harmful to us, harmful to people around us, and harmful to our relationship with God and with the community of the Church. This is how the Lord’s ‘going out into the desert to fast and pray’ is truly a gift for us!

We take the stark awareness of these behaviors to Him because we are weak and incapable of changing them on our own. He does the heavy lifting. He supplies the courage and strength. He gives us the determination to address those areas in our lives that displease Him. He can support us through the, at times, laborious walk through the Lenten desert! The tools He uses to work in us are: prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Prayer
We start Lent with a firm decision to find more time to pray at home (rosary, praying the psalms, praying for people who need our prayers). We draw encouragement in our decision to pray more by coming to pray with the community of believers at Church (weekday Masses when possible, Stations of the Cross; adoration of the Blessed Sacrament).

Fasting
If we weren’t yet resolved on Ash Wednesday, we begin some kind of a self-denial today! We find something we enjoy and we tell ourselves “no” for Lent. These small cravings that we deny help us to recognize how the soul’s greatest desire is greater union with God. He is our greatest joy, our eternal delight!

Almsgiving
In Lent, we make monetary sacrifices to help the poor. This act of selflessness is also a sacrifice. It’s an anonymous act of love for a person or persons who cannot repay us, a charitable offering that is known only by God. We get no earthly recognition or credit in return, but something much better — an outpouring of grace.

I would encourage everyone to make the decision this Lent to go to meet our Lord in the sacrament of Penance. Perhaps it’s something you dread. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience in the confessional at some point in your life. Maybe the thought of going to a sinner who sits on the other chair and confessing to him is not appealing. Or maybe somewhere along the way you began to think that it’s not necessary. Make this Lent the point in your life that you leave all of that behind.

Go and meet the Merciful Lord Who waits to receive you! Our Lord gave us this sacrament because He knows that we need it. It’s how He heals us, and restores us, and makes us new. We have a Lenten Penance Service scheduled for March 24^th, but why wait? Begin your Lent with this saving encounter any Saturday, or even stop one of us when you see us, or call us.

The Glorious and Immaculate Virgin is interceding for us all as we set out to accompany her Son in this Lenten Fast!

In the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
Fr. Jean-Luc