Posted on 02/05/2005 11:10:07 PM PST by Salvation
Six minutes a day
That’s what you will be asked to give from now until Easter. Each 24 hours day has 240 “six minute” packages. During Lent one of these will be given to the Lord.
Once you get into it you’ll find this practice to be peaceful, even something to look forward to. You’ll also find that it helps to make your day go a bit better. Prayer does that.
Focus on the Scripture test. God may take you down a path different from the written reflection that is provided. Don’t worry about that. God speaks to us through the Sacred Word. Stay with the Scripture and the thoughts that come. This is a traditional form of prayer.
The first post for each day has a variety of quotes, suggestions, information, timely thoughts. Treat it like a buffet table from which you can take what you like. (If pressed for time, go directly to the second post the that day and spend your time with that.)
We won’t start reading the Passion until Ash Wednesday, when Lent actually begins. But we’ll start the six minute program on Sunday, February 6 (the Sunday before Ash Wednesday), which will give us three days to get ready for Lent.
(Before you begin to sketch your Lenten plans on a piece of paper, go to the next post. We need to do some thinking and praying before we chart a course through Lent. God is our guide and it’s to God we must go before we do anything!)
My Lenten Plans:
A Good Beginning is Important
Getting ready for Lent is as simple as stop, look and listen:
Stop your activity for a few minutes;
Take a look at your life;
listen to the Spirit within you. When you do that, you will be able to tailor your resolutions to your own needs. Try this:
Start by asking God to tell you what to do (or stop doing) during Lent. We all have a stock list of “resolutions” in the back of our head, but God might have something in mind that will surprise us.
Use a piece of paper with the title from the previous post to jot down ways you can build into your life the three traditional Lenten practices: Fasting, Praying, Almsgiving (acts of charity). At this point you are simply brainstorming. Between now and Ash Wednesday you may cross off some resolutions and add others.
Write down some other possibilities tailored to your life.
Begin to pare down the list to just a few.
There is time to work on this. Think about your resolutions and look at them again tomorrow.
And read!
The Holy Season of Lent -- Fast and Abstinence
The Holy Season of Lent -- The Stations of the Cross
[Suffering] His Pain Like Mine
Kids and Holiness: Making Lent Meaningful to Children
Mardi Gras' Catholic Roots [Shrove Tuesday]
“Do people weigh you down?
Don’t carry them on your shoulders.
Take them into your heart.”
(30 Aug, 1962)
~Dom Helder Camara
Dom Helder Camara
Born on this day in 1909, Dom Helder Camara once said he had a “thousand reasons for living,” not the least of which was because “love walked with him”, especially in the faces of the poor.
Archbishop Camara was barely five feet tall and about 120 pounds, yet he figured largely in his diocese in northeast Brazil. He was known simply and lovingly by his people as “Dom Helder” yet at the same time was branded by the Brazilian military dictatorship that he opposed as the “red bishop”.
His life exemplified his identification with his people. He tossed aside the trappings of Church hierarchy and wore a simple wooden cross. When he was named archbishop of Olinda and Recife, he relinquished the archbishop’s palace, and lived in a sparsely furnished room in the back of his church.
Because of his work for human rights, Dom Helder was nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize, bur never won. He supported land reform, and his activism earned him death threats and once his home was riddled with machine gun fire.
Dom Helder Camara died of cardiac arrest on Aug. 27, 1999
The ’40 Days’ of Lent
Our “40 days” is a round number with symbolic meaning. The Jews spent “40 years” in the desert on their way to the Promised Land. Jesus spent “40 days and 40 nights” in fasting in the desert before beginning his ministry.
In the early centuries, the fasting days leading up to Easter varied – in some places two days, in others a week. Gradually this grew longer and longer, and by the mid-fourth century, Lent began six weeks before Easter.
However, fasting was always prohibited on Sunday, which meant that there were only 36 fasting days. To resolve this, the Church added four days of fasting (Ash Wednesday, and the Thursday, Friday and Saturday after Ash Wednesday), thus giving us 40 days of fasting.
Lent itself ends on the evening of Holy Thursday (the vigil of Good Friday). We then begin the Triduum, the most sacred three days of the year, lasting through Easter Sunday evening.
Shrove Tuesday
The term Shrove Tuesday originates from medieval times, when people confessed their sins in order to be "shriven” or absolved from their sins. Many Christians would make a special point of self-examination, to see what they needed to do to get their lives in order.
Shrove Tuesday has also become a feast of pancakes. Traditionally held the day before Ash Wednesday, people would make pancakes as a way to use up their supplies of fat, butter and eggs (foods forbidden during Lent.)
In England, perhaps the best known custom is the traditional Pancake Day race. Allegedly, it began when a woman cooking pancakes heard the Shrove Tuesday bell begin to chime. Without thinking, she immediately ran to the church, still wearing her apron and holding her fry pan.
Today is also “Paczki Day.” Paczkis came to the United States from Poland around the turn of the 20th century. Since the Poles were strict about their Lenten observance, they needed to get rid of all the fat and grease in the kitchen. A resourceful solution was to fry paczkis. Originally, the were flat and were made with raisins.
Lent begins tomorrow. Spend some time on the plans you wrote on February 6.
Background on Mark’s Passion
Before the Gospels were written down, they were stories told, passed on through oral tradition. The story people told the earliest and the most was the story of how Jesus died. It took shape very early, which is why the written accounts are so similar in all four Gospels.
Why would they concentrate on this embarrassing story? Because everyone knew the ending: The resurrection. If God could take something as awful as the crucifixion and transform it into something life-giving, then God could do the same with the worst things in our lives.
Each Palm Sunday, the Passion Narrative is from either Matthew, Mark, or Luke, rotating every three years. (John’s account is always read on Good Friday.)>
Mark’s was the earliest of the four Gospels, written about 70 A. D. His style is “straight from the should". Using down-to-earth concrete language, he tells it like it is, the good news and the bad news.
Mark is also the shortest of the four Gospels – about 15,000 words, roughly as many as two pages of a daily newspaper. Of those, 2,300 are devoted to the Passion. We’ll begin walking through it tomorrow.
"straight from the shoulder".
Ash Wednesday
Ashes are an ancient symbol of penance predating Christianity. They remind us of our mortality. We come from dust and unto dust we shall return.
They are made from the burned palms of last year. Placing ashes on the head was an ancient penitential custom, as is evident in the Bible (e.g. Jonas 3:5-9.)
From about the fifth century, sinners confessed their sins on Ash Wednesday. They did not receive absolution but were enrolled in the “order of penitents,” signified by placing ashes in the form of a cross on their foreheads. They were then assigned public penance to be performed throughout Lent and on Holy Thursday morning they received absolution
Today we begin reading the Passion according to Mark. One way to pray the Scripture is to “take someone with you” and talk with them along the way. For example, Mary Magdalene or Peter, or Mary the mother of Jesus.
The Passion According to Mark
The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days’ time. So the chief priests and the scribes were seeking a way to arrest Jesus by treachery and put him to death. They said “Not during the festival, for fear that there may be a riot among the people.”
(Mark 14:1-2)
Thunderclouds had been gathering on the horizon for a long time. Herod had beheaded John the Baptist. Religious leaders felt more and more threatened by Jesus. Now the die is cast. They have decided to kill him.
Jesus spent most of his life and ministry up north in Galilee. Now is has come south to Jerusalem for the Passover, where as many Jews as possible gathered to celebrate the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt some 1,300 years earlier.
There is a festive spirit in the air. Although life seems normal, Jesus is two days away from death.
At the beginning of the movie, Brian’s Song, a voice says: “Every true story ends in death. This is a true story.”
The story of Jesus is a true story. He dies. But the story doesn’t end in death.
My story is also a true story. I will die.
Ash Wednesday is a good time to talk to the Lord about life and death…and life after death.
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Lenten Prayer and Reflection Ping List.
Thanks, Salvation, for posting the Lenten threads.
Here's wishing all readers of this thread a blessed day. May these readings strengthen us in the Lord.
btt
God bless my fellow Catholics and every one else as Lent begins.
In particular with extra fondness I will say a prayer for our Pope. He's a good man, a brilliant man and is good for our church.
He deserves to serve as long as he wishes, and his sufferings should be an inspiration to us all to persevere in hard times or with difficulties of life.
God Bless everyone here at FR and that goes for you lurkers to... :-)
Thanks for your prayer!
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