Lent I
Candlemass, just before the procession
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Daily Sermons
February 8 – Fr. Lehtoranta – An Angel with a Golden Key
February 9 – Fr. Lehtoranta – St. Cyril of Alexandria
February 10 – Bp. Dolan – His Face Your Face
February 11 – Fr. Lehtoranta – Mary, Penance and Priesthood
February 12 – Bp. Dolan – Measure Yourself
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✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Blessed Quadragesima, or Lent, Sunday. This is our liturgical Angel Sunday as well. May they guide you through the cold and ice of these first days in the desert, fasting with Christ. You wouldn’t know it, but the weather hasn’t really been so bad. It’s just Winter.
For the second year in a row our little school Mardi Gras party was snowed out, and many stayed home from Ash Wednesday services as well, though not so bad as last year. We had a good flow of faithful and visitors all day long for Masses and ashes. On holy days and feasts of devotion we always have a good group of “unknowns.” Last night I was thinking that maybe they were angels, sent to fill up the places left empty by our own faithful.
I’m writing this on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, patroness of the sick. Please say a prayer for all of our sick and shut in, especially Fr. Cekada who has a serious back problem, and also Fr. McGuire who tends to our sick, and Fr. McKenna who has continuing back issues himself, and is on a long marathon drive today from Milwaukee to North Dakota, bringing blessed ashes and candles and The Mass for isolated Catholics. Today is Father’s fourth anniversary of Ordination. God bless and protect our priests and our sick.
To complete the priests’ news, Fr. Lehtoranta has at last received his working papers from the INS. This means he will be able to renew his driver’s license and resume more easily his visits to the sick and to Kroger for bread and salad, as well as to St. Clare for Holy Mass. Thank you, 19, for all of your help!
Fr. Cekada goes to the seminary this afternoon. Last week he was busily mapping out the music for High Mass on the Sundays of Lent, among other things. These other things include an entertaining and enlightening video on R&R Pope Fictions, and the launching of an appeal for the first of our church heating/air conditioning units, whose shelf life will soon be up. Thanks for a little extra Lenten generosity. They’re expensive.
Ditto for the St. Valentine’s Bake Sale this morning. Thanks for your help as you enjoy a little treat or two for Sunday, before resuming the fast on Monday. Do remember the Spring (?) Ember Days this week. Carnivores, young and old, should eat meat just once at the principal meal, on Wednesday and Saturday. On Friday of course we abstain. How odd (I really can’t get over it!) that our Kentucky cousins are now eating hamburgers on Friday as their one solitary gesture of solidarity with the Novus Ordo Pope. Imagine it! Friday abstinence is no more for them. Their parents and grandparents, what must they be thinking? They used to say that the reason most Catholics accepted the changes is because it was easier. Indeed.
Let me include a plea for faithful obedience to the fasting laws of the true Church, real mortification notwithstanding. That’s the point! Love this world, and you will perish with it. Love Lent, and you will love God…and life!
Be generous. Come again to Mass this week. Come to Stations. Pray for the coming of Spring, and the soul’s Spring most of all.
Bishop Dolan