Father's Column – February 23, 2020

Posted on February 23, 2020 View all news

Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ! 

A reminder that this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. Join us during our scheduled Masses; you can find the times later in the bulletin. Please also note that this is a day of Fast & Abstinence. The regulations are also included in the bulletin. While we are required to do penance every Friday, during Lent, we are required to abstain from meat each Friday. Please be sure to be aware of this!

As a practical note, please know that the paid parking signs are up in the parking lots as part of our agreement with Urban Sites for more parking on Sundays and Holy Days. You are free to park there on Tuesday’s during Adoration and Catechism. They are not towing, or ticketing, yet, more practical information will be forthcoming. 

As we make our final reflection on the Season of Septuagesima, please find our final reflection from Dom Guéranger. Please know that these have only been selections from three sections on his reflection on this season. Please read the rest if you have time and are interested in a fuller preparation for the great Fast. 

“The joys of Christmastide seem to have fled far from us. The forty days of gladness brought us by the Birth of our Emmanuel are gone. The atmosphere of holy Church has grown overcast, and we are warned that the gloom is still to thicken. Have we, then, for ever lost Him, we so anxiously and longingly sighed after, during the four slow weeks of our Advent? Has our divine Sun of Justice, that rose so brightly in Bethlehem, now stopped his course, and left our guilty earth?

Not so. The Son of God, the Child of Mary, has not left us. The Word was made Flesh in order that he might dwell among us. A glory, far greater than that of his Birth, when Angels sang their hymns, awaits him, and we are to share it with him. Only, he must win this new and greater glory by strange countless sufferings; he must purchase it by a most cruel and ignominious death: and we, if we would have our share in the triumph of his Resurrection, must follow him in the Way of the Cross, all wet with the Tears and the Blood he shed for us.

The grave maternal voice of the Church will soon be heard, inviting us to the Lenten penance; but she wishes us to prepare for this laborious baptism, by employing these three weeks in considering the deep wounds caused in our souls by sin. True, – the beauty and loveliness of the Little Child, born to us in Bethlehem, are great beyond measure; but our souls are so needy, that they require other lessons than those He gave us of humility and simplicity. Our Jesus is the Victim of the divine justice, and he has now attained the fulness of his age; the altar, on which he is to be slain, is ready: and since it is for us that he is to be sacrificed, we should at once set ourselves to consider, what are the debts we have contracted towards that infinite Justice, which is about to punish the Innocent One instead of us the guilty.” – Dom Prosper Guéranger

Read More: http://www.liturgialatina.org/lityear/septuagesima/septua3.htm