Lent

We stand before Christ, transcending time, awaiting the moment when the energy of light and life — unleashed at creation, and subsumed (just once) into the quiescence of a grace-filled womb — flares through that enshrouded body, reanimating, resurrecting.

Every one of us needs the grace of new life in Christ, and the entirely new heart that goes with it.

In retrospect, all these meals were as awful as they sound, but — whether intentionally or not — they delivered a message that our fasting and our abstinences were meant to be taken seriously and not subverted through technicalities.

In celebrating Lent and in every season of the liturgical year, it is good to recall the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, that the “Church honors with special love the Blessed Mary, Mother of God, who is joined by an inseparable bond to the saving work of her Son.”