St. Joseph of the Lakes

And so it begins.....we enter into one of the more reflective times of the Church’s year: the season of Lent. Hopefully Ash Wednesday provided a good entry into the season. I know that a few of you will have forgotten to abstain from meat, while others will argue that the white meat from chicken didn’t really count as meat ( I have never gotten why some argue this since it is called “white meat”). Abstaining from meat and fasting are meant to throw you off your normal routines throughout the season and cause you to become more reflective about your physical and spiritual lives. It is easy to separate these two realities of our existence and to think that we need to attend to them in separate manners. We can think that we need more prayer time to become more spiritual but what Lent is about is realizing that we are united body and soul and what happens to us physically does affect us spiritually.

We heard on Ash Wednesday that what God wants from us is prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Each of these practices is to be done in a private manner, so that we derive no benefit from others by seeing us in these actions. My sense is what God really wants others to see in us is joy, happiness and a willingness to interact with others. St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians speaks about how we are all part of a single body, with Christ as our head. We are united in His Spirit and we are to be guided by that spirit in all that we do ( not just our church time).

My hope is that this season will bring you closer to each other as we have many opportunities to be together in the next several weeks.