Lent: A Time of Fasting, Prayer, and Pennance

So we have just begun the wonderful Lenten season all across the world. We begin to prepare ourselves for the death and resurrection of the Lord. For me Lent is one of my favorite times of the Church season, although it requires much work in our physical and spiritual lives. Lent is not easy, but at the end of it I always feel better. I always like to see Lent as the Spring Cleaning of our lives/souls. We begin to notice how our society is filled with excess and busyness. We are able to get back to our roots of focusing in on the beauty of Christ and The Cross.

Through the Lenten season we focus on fasting. As you have seen in the clip above, different people have different views of how fasting should be done. It has been said by many that "fasting is a lost art of the Church." In our modern culture we have such excess that it is hard to comprehend the idea of purposely restricting ones self from the comforts of daily life. Fasting can be done in many ways like as stated in the video from above. If you are in love with technology maybe your IPhone or Facebook is a great thing to give up. Refraining from food/things can help us to bring our bodies under the control of our souls and better in tune with what the Lord is calling us to in our daily lives.

Just as we give things up, it is a great idea to add things to your prayer life. Prayer is another key component to Lent. As we are fasting we become more capable to be in touch with the graces that God has for us. So we can help build our prayer lives in a deeper way by adding something a little extra to our daily prayer lives. It could be setting a schedule of prayer time of 5 minutes in the morning and/or evening before bed time. Maybe picking up a reading a chapter of the Bible every day (start with the Gospels first). Another option is reading the Sunday mass reading before you go to church or on the daily saint of the day. You can look to the left on the blog with the link "Mass Readings" and "Saint of the Day" and you can instantly have access to them. Whatever it is God will greatly enjoy it.

This year the Diocese of Baton Rouge is continuing "The Light Is On" campaign to give all Catholics the opportunity to go to sacrament of Confession. Every Wednesday evening St. George will have multiple priests hearing confession from 6-7:30pm. Also, St. George will still be having its weekly confessions from 2:30-3:30 before the Saturday vigil mass. So be sure to clean house during this Lenten season. There is no better way to celebrate Lent then recognizing the forgiving power of Christ on the Cross. So if it has been a 6 months or 6 years don't miss out.

Be sure to make this Lent a Great one. Every year during Lent is a great to concentrate on one sin in your life you struggle with. If you manage to help reduce the occurrence of sin or wipe out the struggle all together then it was a success. Even if you are unable to reduce the occurrence, just being aware/admitting it in your life is half the battle. Take this Lent and make it a good one. Just remember Jesus spent 40 days in the desert in prayer and fasting. He totally knows what your going through when you have the temptation to break fasting and prayer. He was there himself.