Make this Season of Lent your best yet

By the time this issue of our Diocesan Newspaper reaches you, January will have drawn to a close and we will be only about two weeks away from the beginning of the Season of Lent with our celebration of Ash Wednesday. This period of about two and one-half weeks in our year is always a very important time for a few reasons.
 
The first reason is that the last few days of January and the first two days of February is this year’s Catholic Schools Week. What I have decided to do as a part of our Diocese’s observance of this special week is to publish my next Pastoral Letter to all of the Catholics of the Diocese of Bismarck. Its topic is Catholic education and not only its essential and necessary place in every Catholic’s life, but also the very best tried and true expression of Catholic education in the universal Church and in our Diocese. I urge you to read it either on our diocesan website or please take a copy of it in your parish. All of our parishes will be receiving copies for distribution to you.
 
Another reason this period of time is important is because so many of our young people and young adults will just have returned from the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. I urge all of you to do two things which will visibly and concretely support them. Pray every day for an end to the mortal sin of abortion in our state and in our nation. The fact that abortion exists has led directly to making euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide legal in some states. To claim that these acts are a person’s legal right and are morally good, is to claim to have a power over another innocent person that no human being has, namely the power of life and death. This is a national disgrace that simply must stop. The other thing each of us can do is to support our young people and young adults in their efforts to return hearts to an embrace of the culture of life and to a rejection of the savagery of the culture of death.
 
A third reason this period of time is so important is that is quickly brings us to Ash Wednesday and Lent, our Church’s annual observance of the ancient Christian discipline of perfection. That is pursued by a faithful perseverance in daily prayer, performing of the works of mercy, and an equally faithful and daily practice of acts of penance or self-denial. As I said, all of this is for our spiritual and temporal good as we strive to strengthen and increase that holiness of life which will get us to heaven. Why do we do this?
 
To be sure, we do this to prepare ourselves to celebrate fruitfully and worthily the holiest days of our year in the Paschal Triduum. However, we do this willingly because we know and understand that what we do in Lent should not and cannot end on Easter Sunday. It is meant to effect in our hearts and minds and wills a real change from the person I used to be to the person the Good Lord created me to be. Just as every day of our lives should be a personal Advent for us, so every day of our lives should be a personal Lent. We simply need to live better the virtue of hope and Lent’s holy discipline helps us do so with a firmer faith and a more willing charity.
 
I urge all of you to make the coming Season of Lent your best so far.