Dear Parishioners,

Lent is approaching. Lent is the liturgical season in which we prepare for Easter. It commemorates the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert to prepare for His ministry. We celebrate it by taking on additional penances and religious practices. Since we have two and a half more weeks until Lent is here, it is good to think about what penance we should practice now. Often when we wait until right before Ash Wednesday, we can often forget about the whole endeavor until Lent is mostly over or not fully apply ourselves to our penance.

When we take on penances, it is not because we believe the world is evil. In fact, we believe that God created the world good (see Genesis 1) and that God loves the world. (see John 3:16) Everything that God has made is a great gift to humanity. However, we can sometimes use these gifts to excess. We can eat and drink more than we need to. We can spend a little too much time entertaining ourselves instead of doing what is good. We can work for our own good to the neglect of our community. Recreation is a good and even necessary thing, but not when it becomes the point of living.

When we take on a Lenten Penance, we first need to ask ourselves one simple question: what am I loving more than God? The answer to this question might be radically different depending on who is answering. Some people might be great at prayer, but they have no self-control when eating. Others may be really into charity work, yet barely ever pick up a bible. Once we examine where we fall short, it is then good to pick something that really challenges. Maybe we could take on spiritual reading, purposefully avoid a certain food, spend some time caring for the poor or pray the rosary every day. There are numerous ways to practice Lenten penance and if you really need help thinking of something, I plan to make a helpful list for next week’s bulletin letter.

No one is perfect. Yet, when we refuse to really look at ourselves and how we are living, we can immediately have delusions that tells us we are perfectly okay the way we are. But, that cannot be true because even the greatest saints thought of themselves as great sinners. (Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II both went to confession daily.) It is a common theme in the lives of the saints that as they grow closer to God, the less worthy they feel of being with Him. If we have an attitude of complacency, then we are really just fooling ourselves.

After Lent is over, depending on how well we did, we will either be glad that we overcame our faults or we will realize just how much we need the mercy of God. Either way, we can praise God for all the opportunities we have to show Him our love. The grace of God is at work in all of you. He is always there to help you in your journey through life. Trust in Him.

God bless,

Fr. Carter