Welcoming The Season Of Lent

For us Catholics, Lent is a forty-day period before Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday (1st March).

We skip Sundays when we count the forty days, because Sundays commemorate the Resurrection. Lent begins on 1st March 2006 and ends on 15 April 2006, which is the day before Easter.

Thus, Lent is a season of soul-searching and repentance accomplished through the chief and traditional ways of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting - a culmination of spiritual discipline. By observing the forty days of Lent, the individual Christian imitates Jesus' withdrawal into the wilderness for forty days.

Am i living the way God wants me to live?

So, it's the 2nd day of Lent today and here's to share with you the Ash Wednesday Message from our His Holiness Pope Beneditt XVI...

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we begin our Lenten journey, when the Church invites us to ponder Christ’s saving work, to live out more deeply the reality of our Baptism and to draw rich nourishment from the Sacred Scripture. Above all, we are to relive with Jesus the forty days he spent in the desert, praying and fasting, in preparation for his public mission. We join him in a spiritual journey, we follow him on the road to Calvary, and after the mystery of the Cross, we experience the joy of his Resurrection.

This day is marked by the solemn distribution of ashes. Two Scripture passages are used to accompany the rite. The first, “remember that you are dust and to dust you will return” (Jn 3:19), urges us to place our hope in God alone. The second, “turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel” (Mk 1:15), directs us to set out on a path of spiritual renewal, rejecting evil and drawing life from Christ’s saving truth.

The theme of my Lenten Message for this year is the Gospel text: “Jesus, at the sight of the crowds, was moved with pity.” We too are called to be attentive to the needs of our suffering brothers and sisters as part of our Lenten observance. Through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, may we be purified and renewed, as we prepare to celebrate the great feast of Easter.

A fellow wayfarer in the Faith,
-rhino 69-