What is Lent?

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ!
Lent is quickly approaching dear friends in Christ! I thought it might be fun to give some definitions of what Lent is today.

The season of prayer and penance before Easter. Its purpose is to better prepare the faithful for the feast of the Resurrection, and dispose them for a more fruitful reception of the graces that Christ merited by his passion and death. In the Latin Rite, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and continues for forty days, besides Sundays, until Easter Sunday. Ash Wednesday occurs on any day from February 4 to March 11, depending on the date of Easter. Originally the period of fasting in preparation for Easter did not, as a rule, exceed two or three days. But by the time of the Council of Nicaea (325) forty days were already customary. And ever since, this length of time has been associated with Christ's forty-day fast in the desert before beginning his public life. According to the prescription of Pope Paul VI, in revising the Church's laws of fast and abstinence, "The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation throughout the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday, that is to say the first days of Great Lent, according to the diversity of rites. Their substantial observance binds gravely" (Paenitemini, III, norm II). Besides fast and abstinence on specified days, the whole Lenten season is to be penitential, with stress on prayer, reception of the sacraments, almsgiving, and the practice of charity. (Etym. Anglo-Saxon lengten, lencten, spring, Lent.)
Source

And from the Catholic Dictionary by Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D.

Lent (LEHNT): (From Middle English lenten; Anglo-Saxon lencten: spring) The forty day liturgical season of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving in preparation for Easter. In the first three centuries, Lent lasted only two or three days. Later, it grew to three or four weeks. The number forty is first detected in the Canons of Nicaea (A.D. 325), Probably to recall Our Lord's forty days in the desert before His public ministry. In the East and West and throughout the centuries, the length of the fast has varied. An important dimension of the Lenten observance was the celebration of Mass by the Holy Father at what are called station churches. The present sacramentary recalls this custom and "strongly encourages the chief shepherd of the diocese to gather his people in this way." The Lenten Liturgy also highlights the present restoration of the Scrutiny Masses on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays of the season for the catechumens (now called the "elect"), who will be initiated at the Easter Vigil. CCC 540, 1095, 1438
Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., Rev. Peter M.J. Catholic Dictionary:Revised. Huntington, IN. Our Sunday Visitor. 2002. 464-465.

May God bless you all abundantly this lent as we grow closer to Christ.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

Everything Lent

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ!
Well, with lent starting on Wednesday this week, I though I would just link up to this great resource! Pray hard and be changed this lent. Please also visit the 'Box' widgit on my sidebar to download a Lenten Journey Calendar with things for everyday during the season. God bless you all abundantly!

A Catholic Life: Everything Lent

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

Lenten Promise and Penance

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ!
Lent is only a week away. A time that I am hoping to fortify my faith and to grow in holiness. The past 6 months have been a time full of falling away, sloth, and sin. It was 6 months before I made my last confession. It was a sad time and one that I wish never to go through again. The pain to have to face Our Lord, knowing you cannot receive Him is great and weighs heavily upon the heart. But, blessed be God in His mercy. Confession bestows great graces for those who seek Him and His forgiveness. These past 6 months have in reality undone all of the work done within me these past 7 years. I feel like I am starting over again from the very beginning. He is calling me to be renewed and to be holy. The scars of my sins will be with me for a very long time, but the pain they caused will be strength enough to fight back the next time that temptation comes to seek and destroy. By the grace of God, I will fight back. May He be praised for His compassion and mercy.

Now, this lent I am hoping to be intense. I want to live life as I have never lived it before. There are so many things that I am hoping to do and get done this Lenten Season that I will be changed within to a point where I can never go back. I have a great list already of things that I would like to do this lent, both promises and penances. I know that if I attempt to do them all, I will just have a complete overload and would fail at keeping several of them. On the other hand, many of them go hand in hand in helping completing each 'task,' if you will.

• Give up elevators
• Give up sugar (low sugar diet)
• Give up meat
• A weekly adoration hour
• Go to weekly confession
• Go to daily Mass
• Pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary daily
• Get to bed by 10pm (unless on duty or in meetings)
• Get up by 7am
• Read the Bible
• Read the Catechism
• Read devotional/religious/apologetics/theology book(s)
• Create one great religious work of art
  

The list as of now is quite long, but if paced well, it is possible to accomplish. Morning and Evening prayer will be a great way to keep my day focused and Mass, adoration, and confession will keep me in a state of grace and enrich my daily living. There are also many other tasks that I need to work on getting done as well, being an RA and all, but God will grant me the time I need to get what I need to get done.

I also ask that whoever reads this will pray for me as I start anew this Lent. I want to be changed totally, and lent is surely a time for this to happen. Please, also leave your intentions so that I may pray for you as well. I want to be able to help others as I engage my mission. May your lent be life changing as well! God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

I Need to Learn More

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you and your holy angels! Tonight, I learned that I need to learn and read more. For one, I need to do some serious scripture study. I really need to get in depth in the Old Testament and, well, just the whole Bible itself! I would love to do the Great Adventure Bible Study all over again, considering I jumped in right at the beginning of the New Testament. I certainly learned a great deal just from that part of the study.

I also need to bone-up on the catechism. I know generally a great number of things, but I would love to learn about all the nuances and deeper meaning behind a lot of teachings. I really need to read the Compendium and then from there I will start reading the actual catechism (as wonderfully an exciting read that may be...). I would also love to be able to read my huge scripture commentary. I have only been able to read a little out of it and I loved what I read. It lent great meaning to a number of passages and even many minor background details that add greatly to the richness and beauty of the scriptures.

I'd love to read up some more about apologetics and such considering the books that I have. Although it is not bad, I have been reading a great number of devotional books rather than informational books. I've decided that if my little sister can tell me who Jesse is and I cannot quite pinpoint it, I need to do some serious studying. St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for me! God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

I Wish Everyday Could be Christmas

+JMJ

Dear friends in Christ! It is true! Christmas is indeed every day! Every Mass Christ is born yet again in the hands of our Holy Priests! He again humbles himself to give Himself to us in this most blessed sacrament. What a great gift we receive when we assist at Mass and receive Christ. There could be no greater joy or greater worship to God than the Mass. Angels flock in the thousands at every Mass and adore the Savior of the world, the Word made flesh. They sing their angelic hymns of worship and praise and adore the Christ child born on the altar and who sacrifices Himself for the sake of mankind. Blessed are we truly to be able to receive such a grace and blessing. O Lord, humble us to know your true greatness and majesty. May the world come to know and love your loving and merciful heart.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

Art

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings yet once again. Today I am rather distraught by modern art. No, not contemporary art. That stuff can get kinda weird. Modern art is stuff like cubism, expressionism, surrealism, and a few others. Yes, I know those styles can also get kinda weird as well. Anyways, I am distraught because I am supposed to paint/draw a expressionist landscape or interior. I wanted to do the inside of a lovely Cathedral, but they are all pretty far away. Then I wanted to do the chapel at Corpus Christi Monastery, but I don't have any good photos for reference. So, I came up with a library or huge study to work on. My only issue with this would be making the numerous books defined, but also have some emotional weight to them. I made some nice oil pastel drawings of certain parts of my idea, but I will have a handful to work with when it comes to the hundreds of books I am going to have to put in there. I liked the sketches very much and would love to carry them over, but it will take lots of work to get it to how I am imagining it to look.

Expressionism is hard. Arg. Sculpture was so much easier to work with when dealing with Modern Art movements. Now painting and drawing, on the other hand, is a whole new ball park. St. Luke, patron of artists, pray for me!

Blogger Ate my HTML

+JMJ

I just wanted to play around a bit and now it won't accept my old blog's HTML... it was fine before I started goofing around. Now suddenly there is an error that was not there a minute ago?
Well, there goes my way cool looking blog with all it's cool grey-ness and graphics. Guess this is my project for this year: Learn HTML so I can actually make a cool looking blog that works. Darn the graphic designer in me!

In other news, I'm going to bed early tonight. I am currently going on 4.5 hours of sleep and I am pretty surprised I am still up and functioning. Perhaps I can wake up somewhat early and get some school work done and maybe even some leisurely reading! Sigh... The cold isn't too bad though. I thought that the 2 degrees we had this evening about 5:15pm was lovely weather for sitting outside to eat some canned peaches. It is times like these when I really can appreciate the joys of long johns. Thank you Ukraine for your many wonderful lessons!

And in sports tonight, I have nothing sports related to say. Yeah, the Bears lost... Colts won. Okay, that's nice. Instead, I bring news about Catholic Stuff happening on campus. Praised be Jesus Christ that I will actually be able to participate and do many things this semester. One of which will be Mass with Cardinal George and the new Bishop of Joliet, Bishop Sartain, on Thursday, February 13th. I am quite looking forward to it. It will be at St. Vincent DePaul Parish at DePaul University, Chicago. I am quite curious as to what the church looks like. I guess that will be one more thing before I head off to bed tonight. And speaking of which, it is getting to be late, so I will leave things off here for now. God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

The Wonders of the Mass

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! To the few that still read or occasionally stop by to see if I have actually written anything, hello! Forgive my long hiatus. School, work, and other things tend to get the better of me and my time. Today, I wanted to share some of the great insight from a recent reading of the very short The Wonders of the Mass by Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, O.P. Fr. O'Sullivan has written a number of beautiful short books, one of which is one of my favorites, All About the Angels. The Wonders of the Mass is more or less a 'pamphlet' rather than a book considering it has only 42 pages and is about 6 inches tall, but it is still an awe-inspiring book.

Fr. O'Sullivan writes so simply and eloquently about the many graces available just by fully participating in the Mass and it is the highest form of praise both on earth and in heaven! Although I had heard this a number of times before, he goes slightly more in depth with the multitude of angels present at every Mass and how they bow down to the priest who gives us from his hands Our Lord and Savior. The book also spoke most highly of priests and the wonderful things they give to us. May God bless our holy priests! There is just so much said in the short 42 pages that just sets your heart on fire for love of the Mass. It is amazing how many little things there are in the Mass that many do not notice nor care to look into that could bring them closer to Christ and help them to understand the awesome power of the Mass.

I pray that we may all be able to love and understand the beauty and the power of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. God Bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

It's been too long...

+JMJ
It's been much too long since I have made a post here. I thought I would leave a little here so as not to think I have gone MIA. There will be more posts here in the future, but for now, things will be a little slow and drawn out. I have been quite busy and I am sure that little will be changing in the near future. God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

Some Previous Rambling

+JMJ

I wrote this quite a long while ago. It does need quite a bit of work, but I stumbled across it and read it today... Felt like I should share.

We are nothing but dust, yet we act as if we are superior or equal to God in many cases. We walk with our noses in the air, taking each step deliberately so as to have an air of superiority. We take immense pride in our talents, appearances, and property. Yet we are to be humble people. We are called to be humble like Christ, the Divine, who humbled himself so as to come into our presence, taking on the form of lowly man. Yes, we are loved immensely and truly, but we act as if though we are loved more than others. Our gifts and talents are not something to be shown off nor paraded around. We have such a tendency to allow for pride in everything we do. We let little room for humility to come into our lives. Christ has called us to love one another as He has loved us. Pride does not love. We walk with pride even in our Churches, especially those who have been allowed a special duty. We find ourselves exempt from participating fully and allow for Mass to become a stage show to exhibit our talents and property. Our duty becomes more important than Christ. It is terrible to sit and watch the self-importance and self-love throw Christ aside like an ordinary newspaper, when in fact, He is the Word Incarnate! Our voices, as beautiful as they may be, were not made for human pleasures, but rather for praise of God. Our bodies, as lovely as they may be, are not meant for human pleasures, but as a temple for the Holy Spirit and for the Greater Glory of God! Our property should only be that which we need to survive our earthly pilgrimage, nothing outside of our needs should be supplied. God has given to us all we need, but we find we must find pleasure in earthly human things, especially self-love, and find that we need to give ourselves more and we must become the superior and best there is. We find no room for humility in our overcrowded lives and hearts. I say, clean yourselves of all this excess. Leave it all behind. Humbly continue the pilgrimage and kill the pride that has taken hold of you. Let not the evil one trick you into falling into the terrible sin of pride. “From pride all perdition took its beginning” (Tob 4:14). If you rid yourself of pride and embrace humility with all your being, you will find yourself being rid of other sins and temptations, for pride is in all sins. Examine your conscience and pray that God will allow you to see the self-love and pride within each of these sins. Pray that we all will be freed from the chains of this serious and disastrous sin.

A Sudden Desire

+JMJ

It has been quite sometime since I have really desired within myself the religious life. Suddenly today, I feel such a strong desire. It is almost flame like, engulfing my heart in love. I feel it may have to do with reading Showings by Julian of Norwich. It is such a simple and straightforward text, but at the same time filled to the brim with such a rich and deep love of God. It is beautiful. I am not quite through it all and I have more than half of it to finish, but it is just so beautiful in the way that the love of God shines forth so brilliantly.

I feel such a desire for God although it has been sometime since it feels like I have had a sincere desire for Him. There have been times where I have broken down into tears just telling Jesus, I know I need You, but I can't hold on to You! I want You but I need to do better and stay closer to You.

Jesus I need You.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done.

A little rant

+JMJ

So... on October 12th Fr. Robert Barron came and gave a great lecture at my uber liberal UCC College. He was talking about the life of John Henry Cardinal Newman and also a bit on the liberal conservative divide there is in the Church today. I recorded the entire thing (over an hour) and I would share with you if I could somehow get it hosted some place, but I am not that web savy. Afterwards, we had an ice cream social that got into some deep discussion. I also found out that I think there is only two Catholics on campus that think that homosexual relations and gay marriage are wrong. I am pretty sure I one of them.

So, a few weeks ago, I was at Mass with my mother and sister and I hadn't been to Mass last Sunday and I knew I could not recieve. My mother was quite mad at me afterwards and gave me that glare and said she wanted to talk to me afterwards. I hadn't done anything wrong (well, at least any worse) and when I explaind that I could not recieve because I was in mortal sin and hadn't confessed, she told me that I take this all too seriously! Recieving the Blessed Sacrament is not a right in any way... it is a gift, and one that we must prepare ourselves to receive always! I wish that we could educate everyone to realize this.

I've also come to realize that I have slowly been secularizing myself and letting myself slip into a bit of lethargy in keeping watch. I have learned that I have been way to loose with my money and now I have to pay about $2,000 for car repairs (my car started smoking as I was driving home this past weekend) plus I owe my mom $165 for towing my car to be fixed. I have maybe just over $2,000 right now, both in savings and in checking. I'm poor... :(

Well, that is about all I have to rant/share with you today. May God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

So, I was thinking...

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you all and your holy angels! I realize it has been far too long since I have made any sort of update and a lot has happened, although nothing major or fantastic. Monday I spent all day Downtown at the Field Musuem taking pictures for my Non-European art history class. My dad also got us tickets to see the King Tut exhibit while we where there. It really wasn't as good as I imagined it would have been. There was some really beautiful things there, but for some reason all this gold and artisian work really doesn't astound me. Even the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel didn't take my breath away. Yes, it was beautiful. What I found even more beautiful was the Crucifix on the altar. It was nothing extraordinary and possibly made by someone we don't know. I loved it and I wanted to get closer to it to see each and every detail. I love the wonderfully ornate and beautiful churches that are not tourist destinations. I was in awe of the beauty of St. Peter's, but I fell in love with the quiet sanctity of St. Paul's Outside the Walls. Am I crazy? Does the environment of art really change it's beauty?

Some new clothes...

+JMJ

Well, here is the new layout. I am still thinking about a black and blue one though. I am hoping to do some more tweaking as I go along, but this is about it for now! I am also working on some more stuff for the side bars, although I don't think it will be too hard to come up with. Suggestions are always welcome. And, yes, I know that some of the old posts look funny due to the format change.
Pax Christi!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

This is the beginning of the new

I am totally working on trying to re-vamp and redesign my blog... I have started with scrapping the previous black and blue and I am working on a more grey-er one... I am currently in transition as I have reverted to a blogger template for the time being. I am working with a loverly little code generator because I have very minimal html-ing skills. So, when it does come, I hope it is enjoyable. God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!