A Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent I’ve trained quite a few horses in my life. Some of them left an impression, literally. Just ask my x-ray technician. I remember, in particular, a colt named Moonshine. He appeared calm when that his owner dropped him off at my place. But the next day, when I slipped a halter across his ears, Moonshine...

Lent is a time where the virtue of temperance gets lots of nods.  Philosopher Josef Pieper called temperance “selfless self-denial.”  This formulation helps us understand this virtue, because many people can be said to have denied themselves comfort or ease for the sake of something, but looking deeper that “something” is very o...

Have you ever thought that the ten commandments kind of start strong and peter out?  It’s like listening to a sermon that starts strong (“You shall have no gods before Me!”), gets appropriately practical (“Honor your parents”), but then gets so broad that it sounds like a platitude.  I’m speaking of that last commandment, “y...

By: Peter Strickland For Lent, I decided I would stop playing with my phone. I want to break the incessant habit of looking at my phone every time I have reason to do anything else. I have realized that I am addicted to looking at that little screen. Any break I get at class, I immediately look at my phone. Sometimes, it is impossible to resist t...

The pillars of our Lenten season are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The point of doing these not-so-pleasant things is to have our routine shaken up a bit, to disrupt our self-centered and self-serving habits so that we can turn ourselves toward the Lord as we prepare for Easter. Here, we'll focus specifically on fasting and how it fits into the ...

By: Jason M. Schreder The days of Lent recall Jesus’ time in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11) where he fasted, prayed and was “tested” in preparation for his mission as the Messiah to heal the broken wounds of Israel, to bring the Kingdom of God into the world, and to defeat the enemies of Israel through a self-emptying love on the Cross (CCC 538...

One of the most noticeable changes in the liturgical calendar following the Second Vatican Council was the removal of the pre-lenten season of Septuagesima. This short season consisting of only three Sundays - Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima - served a preparatory function as the Church embarked on the penances of Lent. The Gloria cease...

As we begin this forty days’ Lenten journey – what Eastern Orthodoxy aptly calls “Forty Nights of Bright Darkness” – it is a good thing to reflect upon the meaning of those ashes placed upon our foreheads in the sign of the Cross with the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is good to recall why we mou...

I officiate a lot of basketball games. One year I worked about 225 games in the six months between October 1 and April 1. To put that in perspective, college basketball teams play 30-35 games in a season, while NBA teams play 82 games during their regular season (the longest regular season in all of basketball) during roughly the same timeframe. Do...

The "three pillars" of Lent have a beautiful logic to them.  The first pillar is prayer because prayer unites us to God and prepares us to receive Him.  The second is fasting, which is a conscious denial to the flesh, disciplining the appetites and joining us more to Christ.  It has the added benefit of uniting us in shared suffering, which ...