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This
season holds the same position, with regard to Easter, as Advent does, with regard to Christmas. It is the oldest of all the liturgical seasons. Besides
being the preparation for the central feast of the whole year, Lent commemorates our Lord’s forty days’ fast in
the desert and the expression of the Church’s desire to join her divine
Master in his penance for the sins of mankind.
The
name ‘ Lent ‘ is derived from an old Saxon word meaning ‘ Spring ‘—it is the spring-fast.
The last two weeks of Lent are known as Passion Week and Holy Week, or the Great Week. During these two weeks the Church follows closely in the footsteps of our saviour during the last scenes
of his mortal life, and on the last three days of Holy Week, she even reproduces in a kind of sacred drama, the very acts
of his Passion, death, and burial. The veiling of the crucifix and statue in all churches, on the Saturday before Passion
Sunday is a survival of the medieval custom of the “Lenten veil”—a curtain hung between the chancel and
the nave as a sign of the Church’s mourning for our Lord. The words of the Gospel on Passion Sunday: "but Jesus hid
himself and went out of the Temple" may also have influenced this usage. But the Lenten-veil was hung up at the beginning
of Lent and not only during Passion-Week.
LENT AT OUR PARISHES
Ash Wednesday
Sunday and Daily Mass
Friday Stations of the Cross
Rice Bowl
Rice Bowl Calendar and Daily Spiritual Activities
Sacrifice, Fasting and Praying
Dedication to the “Called To Be Church” Process
Sacrament of Reconciliation, every Saturday,
3:00 pm at St. Paul’s
Sunday Latin Confessions at St. Peter’s
Joint
Parish Lenten Communal Penance Service, St. Peter’s, Sat., March 15, 1:00 pm
Making a WEEKLY Silent Holy Hour at St.
Paul’s’ Adoration Chapel
Loving
One Another as Jesus Loves Us
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