Dear Friends,
Lent begins next week. Now is the time to start making your plans for spiritual growth during the Lenten season. The Liturgy Committee of the parish has followed Pope Francis’ example in coming up with our parish focus for Lent 2017. Our focus will be “Friendship With Christ – Through His Poverty We Become Rich In Grace.” The liturgical environment, the music, the prayers, and the special activities will all reflect this focus.
The question for you as you begin your Lenten season then is – how is my friendship with Christ? Do I regularly reflect on what he gave up so that I might be in a close relationship with him? What can I change in my life so that I might grow closer to Christ?
One of the images we will be using during Lent is that of human hands. We will be placing paper images of hands near the entryways of the church. We invite you to take some of those home with you, write on the paper hands what you are doing to grow closer to Christ, and then bring the hands back with you to place in baskets in the church. We will ask God blessings on those activities that you have written on the paper hands.
The Adult Formation Committee has decided to offer Bishop Robert Barron’s new series, Catholicism, The Pivotal Players for our Lenten Thursdays this year. Much like we did during Advent, the video series will be offered Thursday mornings following the 8:20 Mass (so about 9:15) and Thursday evenings at 7:00. They will take place in the parish center and will last around 90 minutes. If you would like to see a preview of what we will be studying in the series you can watch the trailer at www.wordonfire.org.
Bishop Barron says that this new series was created to study some of the great players in Catholicism whose friendship with Christ transformed not only their lives, but also the world. Saints are exemplars of holiness par excellence. In their lives the form of Christ takes shape and becomes tangible to the world. The world experiences in the saint a person, who like Christ, is both ordinary and extraordinary. To encounter a saint is to experience the natural as imbued with the supernatural, virtues elevated by divine grace, and human weakness overcome by uncanny strength. The saint becomes for the church and the world an exemplification of what holiness really and truly means. Through their example, we see the potential that friendship with Christ could unleash in our own lives.
My prayer is that your lent will be blessed by God’s love and that you will deepen your friendship with Christ during these 40 days.
Peace,
Fr. Damian
Ps. If you are a non-Catholic Christian who has been joining us for Sunday worship and would like to become a Catholic, we will be offering classes on the Tuesday evenings of Lent to help you make the decision about whether or not to join the church at the Easter Vigil. Please call me at the parish office to let me know if you would like to participate in these classes.