Lent begins Feb. 18 this year. During this holy and penitential season, fasting is required of adult Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59. The required days of fasting are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Pope Leo XIV’s first Lenten message is a great gift for those looking for a roadmap to the season.

Everything we love, cherish and enjoy — the best and most meaningful experiences we remember all our lives — require people who are willing to spend their resources, share their talents and work their tails off to make them happen.

Charlie Camosy recently spoke on this topic with Gabriel LeBeau, a second-year neurosurgery resident at the University of Kansas Medical Center, who has had the bioethics of the brain on his mind for a while now with an interest in brain-machine interfaces, neurotechnology and cerebrovascular neurosurgery.

Lent is something we do together, as a community of believers, surrounded by the grace of God. We’re not alone; we accompany one another in our journey of repentance. As the Church’s “growing season,” Lent is rich in God’s graces.

Servant of God Thea Bowman (1937–1990) was a trailblazer in almost every role: first African-American religious sister from Canton, Mississippi, first to head an office of intercultural awareness, and the first African American woman to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

So, dinner was a little bumpy. But then my sister pulled out a pan of fresh apple crisp—still warm from the oven—for dessert.

With his beatification once again on track, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen will be memorialized in the Church for reasons far beyond his contributions to the Church’s intellectual life or his evangelical zeal, incredible and legendary though they are.

Rev. King’s 7,000-word response, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written in the margins of a newspaper and smuggled out by his attorney, has become a classic of the Civil Rights Movement and a good reread during Black History Month.

Even with our best plans, life is full of surprises. Whether they bring joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain, light or darkness, they offer us an opportunity to grow in love and relationship with God and others who walk life’s journey with us.