THE SEASON OF LENT

On Wednesday, March 2nd, the Church celebrated Ash Wednesday and we began the Lenten Season. During Lent, our lives as Christians are punctuated by the three great pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The Season of Lent is a penitential season: a season in which we show sorrow and repentance for our sins. We prepare through self-denial and devotion for the coming Easter celebration in when we celebrate the fact that Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.
 
Why do we use ashes to begin our penance? Placing ashes on one’s head is biblical: Daniel begged God for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes; when tempted, Job sat in the ashes rather than sin; in the Book of Esther, we read that Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes in mourning; finally, our Lord cries woe to the unrepentant cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida who should have repented by sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Our Lord has commanded us: “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden.”
 
Growing up at my home parish in La Crosse, on each Sunday in Lent the pastor would pray the Stations before Mass. The booklets used were the very familiar Stations according to the method of St. Alphonsus Liguori. Since I grew up praying this version of the Stations, I always felt comfortable praying them. When I got to the seminary in Winona, Minnesota, we prayed the Stations of the Cross quite differently. Each Friday, a group of fourteen seminarians were chosen to write their own Stations of the Cross and that collection of meditations were prayed. It seemed so different to me because I was used to the words of St. Alphonsus Liguori. There were times I felt upset by my brothers’ meditations since I didn’t think they “hit the mark” in the right way. When I got to the major seminary, we used yet a different booklet. Eventually I realized that the important part about the Stations of the Cross is meditating on the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus, not which words we use to do that. It took me a long time to realize that. Let us all during this Lenten Season take the time to pray the Stations, whether in Church or at home, and truly and earnestly meditate on our Lord’s Passion and Death.
 
The late 10th century English abbot and writer, Ælfric of Eynsham, tells us: “in both the Old Testament and the New, men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little [thing] at the beginning of our Lent—that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.” The purpose of the ashes is to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during Lent. That being said, I wish you all a blessed Lent!