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Lenten Resources

Dear St. Raphael Parishioners,

Thank you to all St. Raphael members who have donated to this year’s Annual Catholic Appeal. Our Sunday Mass attendance was limited this year, both because of Covid and extreme winter weather ALL THREE weekends of the appeal! With this in mind, the Archdiocese has put added emphasis on online giving at the annualcatholicappeal.com website. If you plan to give and it has slipped your mind so far, the website should make it easy for you to get it done. Thank you again in the name of all those the Archdiocese serves.
We have come to Lent once again, our season of penance and preparation. I remember my childhood attending Catholic Schools, and all the discussion of what to “give up” for Lent. It is true that small acts of self-denial, e.g., giving up sweets or some favorite food are an obvious, simple type of Lenten sacrifice. As children, we identified the word sacrifice with giving something up or doing without it. But the original meaning of sacrifice is to make something holy.

In Old Testament times, meat or other food was sacrificed, “made holy” by burning it on an altar, symbolically sending it up to God. We can see the connection there: the burning of the offering both required the people to “do without” it, and symbolically sending it to God. The intention of offering something to God is more important than the self-denial. We make a good offering to God when we give up some of our time for some charitable cause, or spend some time in prayer or spiritual reading. For children, the old tried-and-true method of giving something up works as well as ever. Yet you can add to your child’s sense of charity by saving the money they might spend on candy, and donating it to foreign missions or a food bank.

The last two Sundays we had free books available after Mass for Lenten reading. Audio and video is more omnipresent than ever before, so try making use of Catholic media instead of watching random television shows. Bishop Robert Barron and Ascension Presents are both leading Youtube channels with millions of viewers. If you still prefer paper books, I recommend Catholic authors such as Scott Hahn, Mike Aquilina or Patrick Madrid.

So we have many different choices for our Lenten sacrifices: it could mean giving up one small pleasure or donating some of our time. It could mean some spiritual reading or some extra effort to be charitable to the people we encounter each day. It could mean spending less on ourselves and giving it to charity. However we choose to go about it, the real purpose of Lent is to make a little progress toward holiness. God sees our small efforts toward holiness and sends us help through the grace of the Sacraments and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We may not see much progress day by day, but by the end of Lent’s 40 days we might be surprised at the difference.

God bless you,
Fr. Matthew