On your mark…get set…

Ash Wednesday Eve:
Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, live soberly and set your hopes completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Like obedient children, do not act in compliance with the desires of your former ignorance but, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, Be holy because I am holy.

– 1 Peter 13-16

Ash Wednesday:
Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness and relenting in punishment. Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing. Offerings and libations for the Lord, your God.

Blow the trumpet in Zion! Proclaim a fast, call an assembly; Gather the people, notify the congregation; assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom quit his room and the bride her chamber. Between the porch and the altar, let the priests and ministers of the Lord weep and say, “Spare us, O Lord, your people, and makenot your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! Why should they say among the peoples, ‘where is their God?'”

Then the Lord was stirred to concern for his land and too pity on his people.
– Joel 2:12-18

Living for the Bridegroom

And here is the passive way – be filled unto the fullness of God. The passive way – I abandon myself to it, not in a multiplicity of trials, extraordianry penances accomplished, practices of great works – but in peaceful abandonment to the tenderness of Jesus, which I must try to imitate, and by being in constant union with his meek and humble heart.
What likeness is there between me and my Mother? Do I try to be like her, in her love for Jesus? In her devotion to the cause for which he died – the salvation of souls – in her absolute submission to the will of God, in her patient suffering? Holy Mary, Mother of God and my mother too, let me stand at the foot of the cross with you, to learn its lesson to learn to be like the Mother of Sorrows.
– St. Katharine Drexel