Prayer is essential if our lives are to have any meaning and purpose. Regularity, in turn, is essential for a fruitful prayer life.
I pray this Lent will be a season of genuine refocus. Come Easter, may each of us be a testament to the unflagging vitality and unstoppable power of a truly God-centered life.
It can be debated how faithful Americans have been to President Washington’s vision, but in any event it should be noted that the virtues he outlined aren’t good and necessary because they’re American; Washington extolled them as American ideals because they were first good and necessary. Indeed, truth, justice, peace, and harmony transcend not only the United States, but humanity itself. They are attributes of God himself.
Whatever you do, do for God. Don’t do it because you’re tough and can handle more; don’t do it to be bolder than someone else; don’t do it so you can tell others about it; and don’t do it because it benefits you in some other way. Do it, whatever it is, because you love and trust God. The reward will be beyond your imagining.
A big part of Lent’s power is that we make this 40-day trek together, so I’m asking you to commit to taking on – with all of us, your fellow parishioners – the following three life-changing and love-enabling disciplines:
1. Pray for 30 minutes a day
2. Fast every day except for Sundays and Solemnities
3. Give a true tithe (10% to the parish)
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
