As millions of Catholics around the world mark the beginning of the Lenten Season with Masses and ashes, we take a moment also to reflect upon our lives and prayerfully consider how we can draw nearer to Our Lord through fasting, prayer and alms giving.<\/p>\n
When I was a girl in the 1980\u2019s there was very little focus on the purpose of the Lenten Season, a casualty of the poor catechesis of the last 40 years.\u00a0 We were taught instead to give up chocolate every day and meat on Fridays.\u00a0 It was just one more ritual in a life which was filled with them.\u00a0 My life was filled with rules which I didn\u2019t fully understand, and this seemed almost more like the initiation ritual for an exclusive club than a religious observance.<\/p>\n
Now that I am grown, I approach Lent with a new perspective. \u00a0 It is a time of austerity for which my soul aches every year.\u00a0 The sensory overload of Christmas and the New Year winds down in a frantic pace as we approach Mardi Gras.\u00a0 When Ash Wednesday arrives, I am ready for the rest from feast days and Ordinary Time.\u00a0 I am ready for the challenge of self sacrifice and the invitation to draw myself ever closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.<\/p>\n
This year I had planned to again give up Facebook and sleeping in and to attend daily Mass.\u00a0 This was my<\/i> plan.\u00a0 The more I prayed about it and opened myself to listen to God\u2019s plans, the more I felt led to fast from other things.<\/p>\n
fasting<\/b>
I am a woman with an Irish temper.\u00a0 It flashes hot and loud and I am a yeller.\u00a0 I also have picked up quite a potty mouth since moving to Dallas.\u00a0 The traffic here is horrible and all too often I say words which I ought not to say.\u00a0 This year for Lent, I am fasting from volume and cursing. In changing my tone I will also change my content and praise my children at least 5 times a day each without attaching a criticism to them.\u00a0 Thinking of the sacrifice that my Savior made for each of them shames me when I think of how I sometimes sound when I talk to my children. My family deserves a mother and wife who is kind and in control of herself.\u00a0 I need to speak to them in the calm affectionate tones I want them to remember, the voice of the mother God wants me to be to them. <\/p>\n
prayer<\/b>
I have gotten very lazy in my prayer life and do not speak to God as often as I should.\u00a0 I will still give up my lazy mornings. Instead of Mass, I will pray a rosary every morning, dedicated each morning to a different one of my children.\u00a0 There are so many of them that it is all too easy to think of them as a unit rather than as individuals, so I will pray for them one by one.\u00a0 I have asked each of them to make a list of intentions for me and I will spend Lent praying for the things which are important to them rather than those which are important to me.<\/p>\n
almsgiving<\/b>
We live in a home which is filled to the rafters with mounds of stuff.\u00a0 Not things which are important to us in anyway, just things which we own.\u00a0 We have a surplus where others have great need.\u00a0 Because of this, I will be taking a grocery bag of donations to the local charity thrift store every day.\u00a0 I don\u2019t worry that we will have enough to give away, but that we will still have a surplus when Easter arrives.<\/p>\n
I intend to spend the next 40 days striving to be the woman I am called to be. This family is a gift He has given to me.\u00a0 It\u2019s time that I treated them that way.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As millions of Catholics around the world mark the beginning of the Lenten Season with Masses and ashes, we take a moment also to reflect upon our lives and prayerfully consider how we can draw nearer to Our Lord through fasting, prayer and alms giving. When I was a girl in the 1980\u2019s there was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n