Tag: lent

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Lent Bible Study of Mark

This Lent I led a bible study of the Passion of Christ according to the Gospel of Mark. It met for five sessions starting with the Last Supper through Christ’s death and burial. The five sessions were live-streamed and the recordings are on YouTube. You can watch all but the third session here: playlist. Unfortunately there was a streaming error on the third session that caused it to be lost.

The readings for the particular sections for each session can be downloaded here: readings. I typed up my commentary notes and formatted them into a little book. You can download the notes here: notes. I need to finish editing the notes, and add commentary on the final chapter of Mark, on Christ’s resurrection.

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Lent and Prayer, Fasting, and Alms Giving

Happy Lent to all! In the past I wrote a bit about the why of Lent with a focus on why we do penance. You can read that post here. This year I would like to look at Prayer, Fasting, and Alms Giving. Every year we here and discuss how this liturgical season is a time specially dedicated to these tasks. But how do we understand them, and why do we place a special focus on them this time of the year? The simple answer to why we focus on them now is to prepare to enter more fully into the paschal mysteries during the Triduum 1 , and ultimately participate more fully in Easter. This doesn’t quite answer why these three, or how these three practices do that.

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Reluctance to Battle Against Self

The great season of Lent is upon us. 40 days dedicated to personal spiritual growth and a journey leading us into the Holy Triduum. In anticipating the Resurrection, we dedicate time now to strive to be worthy to participate in the resurrection of Christ. We all have things we are giving up, and hopefully things which we are trying to do better during this time. So often when we think of things to give up, we think of things exterior to us like: kinds of food, Netflix, YouTube, soda, Facebook, etc. How often do we look to those interior things like: complaining, judgment, uncharitableness? Continue reading “Reluctance to Battle Against Self”