Enjoying Church during Lent.
For us, during Lent, we celebrate the commemoration of the forty days Christ spent in temptation in the Wilderness south of Jerusalem, a large area where Herod had built little but the Citadel of Masada, and where there were communities of zealots, such as later found at Qumran, including the Sicarii, where Jesus was alone and He received the entreaties of Azrael, the Satan, another creature from Heaven, trying to tempt the Only Begotten Son of God into rebellion against God the Father. Jesus resisted, and thereby He became the New Adam, the One who would be the Salvation and Redemption of God's most loved creation, Mankind.
For us, it is a period of prayer and reflection, for almsgiving, and fasting, and we are not showy in our dress, nor are we immoderate in our demeanour. It is a celebratory time, but a solemn one when we reflect on how we have been tempted ourselves during the last year. We seek forgiveness in prayer, on realising we haven't thought about the things we have done that we hadn't realised were poor things to have done. Our Saviour's people, those into which He was born, the Jews, were a set aside people, who strove to be a holy people, not given over to the indulgences of the gentiles, and we reflect on how we have fallen short of that ideal during the past year.
For us, this is a period of rededication to the ideals of the Christian family, to our universalism, not partisanism, and we offer prayers, prayer candles, alms for the poor, and we fast of those foods we neither need for basic sustenance, nor should focus our nutrition on. My mother and I enjoyed the Mass, and we offered prayers for family lost, and for family absent.
For us, it is a period of prayer and reflection, for almsgiving, and fasting, and we are not showy in our dress, nor are we immoderate in our demeanour. It is a celebratory time, but a solemn one when we reflect on how we have been tempted ourselves during the last year. We seek forgiveness in prayer, on realising we haven't thought about the things we have done that we hadn't realised were poor things to have done. Our Saviour's people, those into which He was born, the Jews, were a set aside people, who strove to be a holy people, not given over to the indulgences of the gentiles, and we reflect on how we have fallen short of that ideal during the past year.
For us, this is a period of rededication to the ideals of the Christian family, to our universalism, not partisanism, and we offer prayers, prayer candles, alms for the poor, and we fast of those foods we neither need for basic sustenance, nor should focus our nutrition on. My mother and I enjoyed the Mass, and we offered prayers for family lost, and for family absent.
22-25, F
